I’m so picky a made an entire website about them (https://www.programmingfonts.org/) … yet I’ve been using San Francisco Mono exclusively, basically since it was introduced in 2016. It’s quietly perfect. For years before that it was Input Mono that did it for me.
This is cool of course. But so was Rome. Which only existed for about two years. It’s one thing to build a cool tool, it’s something else entirely sustain one over time. I need a bit more proof that this is sustainable before I rebuild our toolchain, _again_.
Yes, I’ve seen a lot with old formats. I don’t think the bitmaps themselves are a problem, I already have a bunch (maybe they are faux bitmap though, not sure actually). And they don’t need to be woff though, that just adds some compression and prevents installation. The latter of course not being an issue for the fonts that are featured here.
Indeed, just the free ones. Although perhaps I should list the commercial ones too in some way.
That said, I do tend to feature them in the tumblr blog, so you can search that for a preview, background info and a link.
What bitmap fonts do you miss? The site is currently restricted to fonts with a license that allow me to serve a web font for the live preview. So while there are a bunch of bitmap fonts in there, there might be some missing. I love to find out about new fonts though.
The problem here is that the information isn’t always available. If the docs don’t mention box drawing characters, or powerline symbols the font may still have them. Also, a lot of sources mention the number of glyphs but not the Unicode ranges that are covered.
I have looked at it but have not found a suitable variant. All I find are commercial versions and “The fonts are not redistributable”. Honestly, I doubt bitmap versions are useful for most people.
Well, there is no way to get a list of installed fonts via the browser, but I have thought about adding an input so you can try installed fonts. I just don't have enough time to tackle all the ideas I have!
Lots of old school fonts aren't available in a format that browsers understand. A TTF version of Terminus is in there though. IIRC there was something wrong with the Gohu font files , I'll have to look if that's fixed nowadays.
A font’s dimensions at a given “font-size” are actually completely up to the designer. Something like x-height can only be determined by rendering and then measuring. Editors tend to be full of character measuring code. x-height also doesn’t say anything about the length of descenders and ascenders. Some fonts are exactly the same size though, there a bunch of variations of Courier to be used as a replacement (for licensing reasons). If they’re not designed to the same dimensions you cannot be sure text will fit on the page with the other font. And if they’re the same size they can still look larger or smaller by a wide margin. It’s a wonderful world :)
Fonts with ligatures are indicated as such, but I’ve yet to add all the other metadata. I do have the data, just need ideas on how to surface it in the UI with too much clutter. I also have to add search, keyboard navigation, etc. I’ll probably have things to do here well beyond retirement ;)
That's what I feature on the blog, but you'll notice the right-hand side of app.programmingfonts.org is interactive. That's kinda hard to do with static images ;)
Another thing I should integrate I guess. However, just as a general note, you can safely use every single font featured on app.programmingfonts.org for yourself.
Good catch, I'll update the link. Both the Mozilla and the foundry's repo seem to have the same font, it kinda makes sense to link to the Mozilla one in this case.
That's a good point. I usually have a little blurb like that on the blog, but I have been trying to integrate more info about each font into the test drive thing. There are lot's of "family relations" like that between fonts.
Hi, I'm the author of programmingfonts.org.
Operator Mono certainly is pretty. I always loved consolas on Windows (honestly, it's the only thing that rendered properly on Win7). That said, I can only include fonts that are freely available, or where the owner of the font allows me to (in the case of Input Mono). I have tried for a few others, but haven't been so lucky there. So, no proprietary or otherwise commercial fonts. I do try to feature them on the blog though.