9 ms·
Mona Sans and Hubot Sans
- 19h 4y agoOf all the fonts I've used throughout my career, the one I love the most is JetBrains Mono. It's just perfect. I even use it in my terminal.
- maxloh 4y agoSeems that many big techs are adopting similar style/variant of sans-serif as Mona Sans for branding. Google's Google Sans: https://imgur.com/N0ePA5O https://imgur.com/N0ePA5O Microsoft's Segoe UI Variable: https://imgur.com/Rq8RKNQ https://imgur.com/Rq8RKNQ Netflix's Netflix Sans: https://imgur.com/Rax5DNF https://imgur.com/Rax5DNF
- dandellion 4y agoI wish they introduced GitHub Sans Downtime instead of this. There's already plenty of high quality free fonts to choose from.
- inoffensivename 4y agoHah, good one! I personally use Ubuntu Mono as my programming font, I've yet to find any font I prefer to spend hours a day staring at.
- culi 4y agoYeah that one mono font quiz[0] always ends up recommending it to me [0] https://www.codingfont.com/ https://www.codingfont.com/
- m3adow 4y agoCool tool, didn't know about this. Thank you! I recommend to hide the font names to prevent any bias.
- naoru 4y agoIt's missing Iosevka which I use daily since its first release. Maybe it's because it has so many variations.
- ternaryoperator 4y agoVery handy utility! My foray steers me to Source Code Pro.
- nvrspyx 4y agoI used Ubuntu Mono for awhile, but I'm now a fan of both Cascadia Code/Mono (depending on if you want ligatures) and SF Mono, although the latter is a pain to install on non-macOS systems because you have to unpack the .dmg file and the underlying .pkg files.
- gmac 4y ago+1 for Cascadia Code, and especially for the ligatures.
- hrbf 4y agoMay I recommend Berkeley Mono (https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/ https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/). It's a paid font but well worth it, given you're spending hours every day looking at it. I have found it to be excellent for the shell and editors.
- netr0ute 4y agoI really like that font, but that price ($75) is really untenable for me. Is there any alternative?
- ashton314 4y agoInput Mono [1] is beautiful, and kinda looks like Berkeley Mono. It too is paid for commercial use, but it's free for personal. I used Input for a very long time until I made my own blend of Iosevka [2] that looks very similar—just with more exotic symbols. [1]: https://input.djr.com/ https://input.djr.com/ [2]: https://sr.ht/~ashton314/iosevka-output/ https://sr.ht/~ashton314/iosevka-output/
- mariusmg 4y agoEveryone and their dog are making fonts these days. Not complaining about high quality free fonts, just find it a bit strange...
- culi 4y agoVariable fonts, color fonts, etc. There's a lot happening https://v-fonts.com/ https://v-fonts.com/ I'll still only stick to websafe fonts for actual websites but I'm excited to see what the future holds. Also because I hate Arial
- psygn89 4y agoThere's a lot you can do with variable fonts. I remember stumbling upon https://variicon.netlify.app/index.html https://variicon.netlify.app/index.html a year or two ago, although there's disdain for using icons as a font it was eye opening for me with what you could do.
- culi 4y agoMy favorite is fonts with a "serif-ness" slider. You can dynamically switch between a serif and sans serif version of the same font. Imagine doing it all with a single font!
- layer8 4y agoAnd none of them seem to have good hinting for low-DPI use.
- stevefolta 4y agoIs Hubot-Sans.ttf working in XWindows for anyone? Mona-Sans.ttf is fine for me, but not Hubot.
- stevefolta 4y agoNever mind. It's that hyphen in its name. Mona Sans is called "Mona Sans", but Hubot Sans is called "Hubot-Sans". And FontConfig requires that the hyphen be quoted, eg.: "Hubot\-Sans-16.5:weight=60".
- noizejoy 4y agoI’m still very happy to see more high quality and free variable fonts. They save a few lines of code and a bit of network egress when self hosting fonts (for better privacy).
- piskerpan 4y agoI thought variable width fonts were pretty heavy? I don’t think you actually save data over loading two separate weights. The savings come in later (3+ weights)
- noizejoy 4y agoIt’s pretty easy to get to 3 weights, just by having normal, big and small in a page and/or site. Also when trying to differentiate between the entire range of h1 to h6 type of headlines within the same font. At least my own tendency is to use at least 3 different weights for most text and heading fonts. But that may be just me…
- aidenn0 4y agoMaybe I'm weird, but I loathe body text in sans-serif fonts. They aren't all equally bad, but ilI are often confusing. Just the other day I was reading something somewhere with a name that ended in "ill" and I had to copy-paste somewhere else to tell it wasn't just a roman-numeral 3 smushed on the end. And of course sentences that start with "Ill" just break my flow of reading.
- gnabgib 4y agoThis was discussed 22 days ago(119pts, 48 comments)[0], slightly different content[1] but not by much. It seems a shame this blog post didn't address samueloph's point[2] (lower L and upper i are ambiguous) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33553659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33553659 [1]: https://github.com/mona-sans https://github.com/mona-sans [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33554633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33554633
- crazygringo 4y agoFor a body text font, there's no problem with lower L and upper i being ambiguous. When you're reading paragraphs of text, there's virtually always enough context that it's a non-issue. Now, if you're displaying code or a password or similar that needs to be retyped, then yes they need to be differentiated, but that's not what a font like this is meant for -- that's what monospaced code fonts are for. But no differentiation is needed for a proportional sans-serif font intended for regular written language. An uppercase i with crossbars above and below would be jarringly ugly for many sans-serif fonts, and similarly a hook at the top of a lowercase L may not fit the font's personality at all, depending on how other letterforms are designed. (And trying to differentiate the lowercase L with something more subtle, by making it a smidgen taller or angling the top, usually might as well be invisible at body text size.)
- Beltalowda 4y agoIt still comes up occasionally; just yesterday a customer was talking about the clID field of an XML file in an email, and it's kind of hard to see. For years I thought Douglas McIlroy was named "Mcllroy" (with two lower L's) and I wasn't quite sure how you should pronounce that, until I heard his name pronounced somewhere; "ohh, it's a capital i!" Given how easy it is to prevent this kind of confusion, I don't really understand why you wouldn't want to at least provide a subtle hint and make either the I or l stand about just a little bit.
- canucker2016 4y agoIt's even worse when one assumes "I" are capital-i's to assuming they are lower-case ells and back. "Ill-advised llama farm was Ian's folly."
- smoldesu 4y agoIt's too grotesk. I think Apple accidentally set everyone off on the "search for the perfect sans font" but neither this nor the new Discord font is anywhere near as nice as San Francisco. If you want a clean sans font, I'd highly recommend Plex sans: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Sans https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Sans Very straightforward, highly legible at all weights, normal-human-being-style kerning and nicely tucked edges. If you're looking for something more flavorful than Roboto, use this or Inter. Please don't design your own eye-melting garbage, for my sake.
- Tao3300 4y agoHuh? It's not hardly grotesk at all. It's doric revival with a dash of fringe bauhaus. Grotesk! smh
- smcleod 4y agoAbsolutely agree, and Plex Mono for monospace!
- BuckyBeaver 4y agoNice call on the Plex Sans, for at least one major reason: The capital "i" has a crossbar. Any font that doesn't have a proper capital "i" (meaning one WITH CROSSBARS) should be rejected, especially for any kind of technical use. If you can't tell the difference between a lower-case L and a 1, the font is useless. And really the same goes for a capital O or zero.
- cratermoon 4y agoThe requirements for programming fonts are a high bar. A few things to ponder: O0D L1l| S8 `' https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5614409/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5614409/
- ruuda 4y agoInter has this as an alternate.
- nagyf 4y ago
- flobosg 4y agoThere’s an earlier font named Mona: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_(font) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_(font)
- yunohn 4y agoWhy is everyone talking about these as /coding/ fonts? They clearly don't have that positioning or intent: > Mona Sans ... work as our primary font across mediums ... You can see it in use on our more marketing-oriented pages on GitHub. > Hubot Sans ... is our secondary brand font at GitHub ... you can see it in use in the ReadME Project, and on the GitHub Universe site.
- jccalhoun 4y agoIn my opinion, any font that makes it hard to distinguish between I and l is a failure.
- lwhsiao 4y agoFor those that really care about the 0Ol1I situation, I would suggest Atkinson Hyperlegible [1]. Previously discussed on HN here [2]. [1]: https://brailleinstitute.org/freefont https://brailleinstitute.org/freefont [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32799872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32799872