I’ve been using Terminus and Cozette forever on MacOS, since I also prefer aliased fonts. However, I came across Iosevka (also in the article) which is the first anti-aliased monospace font that I like, provided it’s displayed on a high DPi “retina” display.
I’m also a big fan of Iosevka, especially the light variant. I’m not blessed with a high DPI display, but its hinting seems to work pretty well with both ClearType and FreeType2, which is not something you can always say.
if y’all haven’t checked out https://monolisa.dev, it’s a great paid face I’ve used for a year or two, with a lovely script italic that i use for comments.
I’m surprised that I’m finding myself fond of the serifs on the Go font: For most fonts, I find that increased line spacing helps a bunch, but the serifs replace that need, sectioning the lines from each other nicely.
A while ago someone shared here a thing that showed two terminal fonts side by side and let you choose the one you liked to narrow down your favourite. I ended up with Source Code Pro, but probably because that is what I use and so my eyes are trained to like it. I’m not sure that I like the ligatures in cascadia-code, but the basic glyphs look pretty nice.
A while ago someone shared here a thing that showed two terminal fonts side by side and let you choose the one you liked to narrow down your favourite.
I’m not sure that I like the ligatures in cascadia-code, but the basic glyphs look pretty nice.
I generally don’t like ligatures when I’m editing or reading code, and I’m glad that Cascadia, like many (most?) monospace fonts with ligatures, lets the user disable them. (You probably saw this, but if you didn’t, try Cascadia Mono rather than Cascadia Code.)
(I also just noticed a nice feature of iTerm2. Even if you choose a font with ligatures, it won’t enable them unless you specifically agree to them. If you do enable ligatures, iTerm2 warns, “Enabling ligatures may reduce performance.” Of course, if you love ligatures, you may consider this a misfeature of iTerm2!)
For me, the final two were JetBrains Mono and Source Code Pro, which are also the two that I use most already. “My eyes are trained to like it” seems to be an extremely credible explanation.
That said, my eyes were once trained to monaco… and I wouldn’t be happy to go back.
Nothing can tempt me away from Iosevka and my custom build of it. I’m not sure why the author thinks it’s only for CJK-heavy use cases. The website doesn’t even mention CJK. Maybe it is good for that too, but to me it’s just a great programming font.
Custom-build Iosevka is the way to go; I do this too. Get everything just the way you like it. And the general shape is very good too (and I like the thin aspect)
I’ve fallen in love with Roboto Mono as of late, and had no idea it was just so readable.
It has no ligatures. No cursive italics. No whimsical letterforms. No serifs except for those required to maintain monospace spacing (so on thin letters like i and l).
I wanted to look at these comparisons, but sadly I’m on mobile right now and this site is hostile to mobile. The previews on the main page are scaled, clicking on them only seems to give me the man example in an awkward page, and I can’t figure out how to switch off the man example.
I’ve been using JetBrains Mono for years and am completely happy. Nice to see this as a finalist so I can continue on without feeling the itch to try another.
Someone mentions it in a comment to this post, but I’m a fan of Berkeley Mono.
No Terminus? Why no Terminus?
To each their own of course but I get headaches if I stare at anti-aliased fonts all day.
I’ve been using Terminus and Cozette forever on MacOS, since I also prefer aliased fonts. However, I came across Iosevka (also in the article) which is the first anti-aliased monospace font that I like, provided it’s displayed on a high DPi “retina” display.
I’m also a big fan of Iosevka, especially the light variant. I’m not blessed with a high DPI display, but its hinting seems to work pretty well with both ClearType and FreeType2, which is not something you can always say.
No need to anti-alias on high DPI displays!
I’ve come to love JetBrains Mono
Here I was expecting this to be about C#.
if y’all haven’t checked out https://monolisa.dev, it’s a great paid face I’ve used for a year or two, with a lovely script italic that i use for comments.
screenshot from @tbray’s fedi thread
I don’t understand why people like these script styles for comments. The cursive “f”, “l”, “r”, and “s” look so jarring to me. But to each their own!
A part 2 has been posted! https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2023/02/14/More-Mono
I’m surprised that I’m finding myself fond of the serifs on the Go font: For most fonts, I find that increased line spacing helps a bunch, but the serifs replace that need, sectioning the lines from each other nicely.
I too like Go Mono precisely because of the serifs. Sadly monospace typefaces with serifs aren’t that popular.
I am a big fan of Cascadia Code https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code and its NerdFont cousin Caskaydia Cove from here https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads
A while ago someone shared here a thing that showed two terminal fonts side by side and let you choose the one you liked to narrow down your favourite. I ended up with Source Code Pro, but probably because that is what I use and so my eyes are trained to like it. I’m not sure that I like the ligatures in cascadia-code, but the basic glyphs look pretty nice.
I believe it was this story?
Yup, that’s the one.
I generally don’t like ligatures when I’m editing or reading code, and I’m glad that Cascadia, like many (most?) monospace fonts with ligatures, lets the user disable them. (You probably saw this, but if you didn’t, try Cascadia Mono rather than Cascadia Code.)
(I also just noticed a nice feature of iTerm2. Even if you choose a font with ligatures, it won’t enable them unless you specifically agree to them. If you do enable ligatures, iTerm2 warns, “Enabling ligatures may reduce performance.” Of course, if you love ligatures, you may consider this a misfeature of iTerm2!)
For me, the final two were JetBrains Mono and Source Code Pro, which are also the two that I use most already. “My eyes are trained to like it” seems to be an extremely credible explanation.
That said, my eyes were once trained to monaco… and I wouldn’t be happy to go back.
Nothing can tempt me away from Iosevka and my custom build of it. I’m not sure why the author thinks it’s only for CJK-heavy use cases. The website doesn’t even mention CJK. Maybe it is good for that too, but to me it’s just a great programming font.
Custom-build Iosevka is the way to go; I do this too. Get everything just the way you like it. And the general shape is very good too (and I like the thin aspect)
A lot of these looked the same to me, which made me newly happy that I use my own custom font. (toot with image)
Inconsolata is really hard to beat, though, agreed.
I’ve fallen in love with Roboto Mono as of late, and had no idea it was just so readable.
It has no ligatures. No cursive italics. No whimsical letterforms. No serifs except for those required to maintain monospace spacing (so on thin letters like
iandl).Just super clear, readable, text.
I wanted to look at these comparisons, but sadly I’m on mobile right now and this site is hostile to mobile. The previews on the main page are scaled, clicking on them only seems to give me the man example in an awkward page, and I can’t figure out how to switch off the man example.
I’ve been using JetBrains Mono for years and am completely happy. Nice to see this as a finalist so I can continue on without feeling the itch to try another.