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I paid for this font. I can't believe it, but I just kept coming back to the webpage every week thinking "Aww dang its nice, but no way would I ever pay $75 for

by AJRF 4y ago

I paid for this font. I can't believe it, but I just kept coming back to the webpage every week thinking "Aww dang its nice, but no way would I ever pay $75 for a font for personal use". But I kept coming back. Again and again, just looking through their page. I tried the trial. I eventually caved. A weird moment for me, but I bloody love this font and I frequently notice how nice it is in all my IDEs. I sound like a shill, sorry.

vinkelhake 4y ago
I had a very similar experience with Pragmata Pro. I kept coming back to the page and eventually just forked out the money for it. I adore that font and I've been using it for going on 8 years. This is not a this font vs. that font comment - it's about spending money on a font and how a lot of people find that a weird thing. For me, I came to the realization that it's a thing I literally spend hours every day looking at, so if spending a small amount of cash would improve that experience then why would I not do it?
- swah 4y ago
  Me too - then Iosevka came along...
  - leephillips 4y ago
    I've settled on this one. Fits a lot of characters on the line while remaining legible, which turns out to be very useful.
  - eddyg 4y ago
    Does Iosevka have hand-designed bitmaps for a bunch of common font sizes so text looks great even on low-DPI displays? https://fsd.it/wp-content/uploads/PragmataPro_bitmaps.gif https://fsd.it/wp-content/uploads/PragmataPro_bitmaps.gif To me, this is one of the best parts of Pragmata Pro (which I also eventually bought and has been my daily driver for years, although I do use Berkeley Mono for presentations and screenshots...)
anamexis 4y ago
I had the same journey with Codelia[1]. Berkeley looks great, though! [1] https://tosche.net/fonts/codelia https://tosche.net/fonts/codelia
- sugarkjube 4y ago
  oh man, thats beautiful. but hefty price tag!
huhtenberg 4y ago
The website is fantastic. Font looks great and samples are an eye candy, so tried it just now. Windows, 1920 x 1200 @ 96 dpi, Visual Studio, light-on-dark theme. I like 'em small to fit more on the screen and at 8px this font looks janky. It is blurry with uneven thickness and requires an eye strain to read. It doesn't seem to be hinted at all even though it is a TTF version. Here's Berkley Mono on the left and Mensch on the right - https://i.imgur.com/CM27hVV.png https://i.imgur.com/CM27hVV.png At 9px characters somehow retain their width but just get taller. At 10px it starts looking better, but glyphs still look kinda feeble and aren't terribly pleasant to look at. Just 2c. The character design is very nice still.
- Daneel_ 4y ago
  I have the same issue. Things look blurry at any font size below 12pt, which affects pretty much all of my use cases since I live in the terminal, sized at 10pt. This is especially bad with the bold version of the font. I really like the look of the font, but the hinting needs to be fixed before I'd purchase it. It's currently unusable for me.
- helmholtz 4y ago
  1920x1200? 96 DPI?! Both those fonts look like absolute garbage, and how could they not? Only, in my opinion, Berkeley Mono actually looks more passable of the two. Something about the one on the right makes it look ethereal. Like it's behind the display. But don't let that detract from the fact that looking at code at 96 dpi is absolute garbage. Perhaps you're broke, in which case I retract my stupid comment. But if not: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/ https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/
  - pjerem 4y ago
    It’s only in the last decade that font designers stoped to care about low-dpi screens. Same for UI designers. It all started when those designers started to work on Retina screens. It would be ok if the vast majority of screens were high dpi. But they are not. It’s not a question of being broke or not. Affordable high-dpi screens are pretty much a recent thing. It keeps being rare (and expensive) on every laptop that isn’t a Mac. Most companies bought hundreds of 1920*1080 screens in the last decade and they have no real incentive to throw them out of the window neither they feel the need to go 4K even when they buy new screens. Good hi-dpi+multiscreen support on windows is no more recent than Windows 10 1703. On Linux it’s still garbage. Millions of people are stuck working with low-dpi screens. It’s not like you have that much power over your employer to ask for a better screen without him changing the whole fleet because all your coworkers now wants one. So I agree with you. In an ideal world, low-dpi should be something from the past. But it isn’t. And in our real world, the real shame is that designers (including font designers) stopped caring for the vast majority of people who don’t use a hi-dpi screen to work.
monkey_monkey 4y ago
I did the same, and have zero regrets. I've tried so many fonts over the last 15 years, but this one just works for me.
KronisLV 4y ago
Personally, I've stuck with free fonts most of the time. For programming, currently I tend to use: Liberation Mono: from the very same package of fonts that are included in LibreOffice, I find it to be surprisingly readable and easy on the eyes for most kinds of code or monospaced text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts PT Mono: while initially I really liked PT Sans and PT Serif separately (they're currently the fonts for my homepage/blog), their monospaced offering is also quite nice; albeit when there's some light colored text (e.g. comments) at the smaller font sizes, the full stop character can become a bit harder to see. Here's more information about them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT_Fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT_Fonts Here's a quick comparison, comparing the two fonts against Consolas and JetBrains Mono (with some Java code, taken from a throwaway project): https://imgur.com/a/mr9afqT https://imgur.com/a/mr9afqT Personally, out of all of them Liberation Mono feels like the most readable, whereas PT Mono just appeals to me stylistically on some level. However, paid fonts, like the linked one are also great - whatever feels more pleasant to stare at for a large number of hours per day!
- nbk_2000 4y ago
  Same here, I try out a lot of monospace fonts as they come along. But Liberation Mono just scratches all my itches so well. I do however enjoy setting comments using fonts that aren't monospaced (which I begrudgingly acknowledge Comic Sans is actually decent for). At some point though the old typographers adage of "people read best, what they read most" must impact our preferences.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    Ive been using proportional fonts for coding for more than a decade now, and I can’t go back to mono space. I just wish there was a proportional programming font with ligatures, but I’m ok doing without if it means going monospace.
  - eps 4y ago
    Try Averia for the comments. In fact I would've loved to try a mono version of it if it were avaiable. http://iotic.com/averia/ http://iotic.com/averia/
muhammadusman 4y ago
I also paid for it, my first font I paid for just for aesthetics and personal enjoyment. I don't regret it. I use it anywhere and everywhere I can!
nerdponx 4y ago
$75 seems worth it for a lifetime of personal use/enjoyment.
filmgirlcw 4y ago
I just did the exact same thing. I've been thinking about it since it was first on Show HN a year ago. And I kept putting it off. Today they got me. And this isn't even the first monospaced font I've spent money on that I know I will probably not always use. I own Operator. Dank. Mono Lisa. But the design and the attention to detail with downloading as regards to the stylistic set defaults (for applications that don't follow/adhere/support stylistic sets, which is something I could write a whole rant on) makes me very happy to support this team.
- shagie 4y ago
  Dank mono annoys me except in one spot - conference presentation slides (where it still annoys me, but I can see it being useful). The italics as cursive is annoying - especially with the 's' that shows up in too many places. However, the difficulty of distinguishing italics from regular on a presentation I can mostly forgive it since I can now recognize the italics and that hint to whatever it is trying to show much more easily than if I was trying to figure out a color (I'm not color blind but that is an accessibility issue) or the 'is that tilted enough?' (and looking for a bit of nostalgia, https://dank.sh/ https://dank.sh/ now redirects to https://philpl.gumroad.com/l/dank-mono https://philpl.gumroad.com/l/dank-mono and while its done, it can be purchased again!)

by AJRF 4y ago

vinkelhake 4y ago

I had a very similar experience with Pragmata Pro. I kept coming back to the page and eventually just forked out the money for it. I adore that font and I've been using it for going on 8 years. This is not a this font vs. that font comment - it's about spending money on a font and how a lot of people find that a weird thing. For me, I came to the realization that it's a thing I literally spend hours every day looking at, so if spending a small amount of cash would improve that experience then why would I not do it?

swah 4y ago
Me too - then Iosevka came along...
- leephillips 4y ago
  I've settled on this one. Fits a lot of characters on the line while remaining legible, which turns out to be very useful.
- eddyg 4y ago
  Does Iosevka have hand-designed bitmaps for a bunch of common font sizes so text looks great even on low-DPI displays? https://fsd.it/wp-content/uploads/PragmataPro_bitmaps.gif https://fsd.it/wp-content/uploads/PragmataPro_bitmaps.gif To me, this is one of the best parts of Pragmata Pro (which I also eventually bought and has been my daily driver for years, although I do use Berkeley Mono for presentations and screenshots...)

anamexis 4y ago

I had the same journey with Codelia[1]. Berkeley looks great, though! [1] https://tosche.net/fonts/codelia https://tosche.net/fonts/codelia

sugarkjube 4y ago
oh man, thats beautiful. but hefty price tag!

huhtenberg 4y ago

The website is fantastic. Font looks great and samples are an eye candy, so tried it just now. Windows, 1920 x 1200 @ 96 dpi, Visual Studio, light-on-dark theme. I like 'em small to fit more on the screen and at 8px this font looks janky. It is blurry with uneven thickness and requires an eye strain to read. It doesn't seem to be hinted at all even though it is a TTF version. Here's Berkley Mono on the left and Mensch on the right - https://i.imgur.com/CM27hVV.png https://i.imgur.com/CM27hVV.png At 9px characters somehow retain their width but just get taller. At 10px it starts looking better, but glyphs still look kinda feeble and aren't terribly pleasant to look at. Just 2c. The character design is very nice still.

Daneel_ 4y ago
I have the same issue. Things look blurry at any font size below 12pt, which affects pretty much all of my use cases since I live in the terminal, sized at 10pt. This is especially bad with the bold version of the font. I really like the look of the font, but the hinting needs to be fixed before I'd purchase it. It's currently unusable for me.
helmholtz 4y ago
1920x1200? 96 DPI?! Both those fonts look like absolute garbage, and how could they not? Only, in my opinion, Berkeley Mono actually looks more passable of the two. Something about the one on the right makes it look ethereal. Like it's behind the display. But don't let that detract from the fact that looking at code at 96 dpi is absolute garbage. Perhaps you're broke, in which case I retract my stupid comment. But if not: https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/ https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/
- pjerem 4y ago
  It’s only in the last decade that font designers stoped to care about low-dpi screens. Same for UI designers. It all started when those designers started to work on Retina screens. It would be ok if the vast majority of screens were high dpi. But they are not. It’s not a question of being broke or not. Affordable high-dpi screens are pretty much a recent thing. It keeps being rare (and expensive) on every laptop that isn’t a Mac. Most companies bought hundreds of 1920*1080 screens in the last decade and they have no real incentive to throw them out of the window neither they feel the need to go 4K even when they buy new screens. Good hi-dpi+multiscreen support on windows is no more recent than Windows 10 1703. On Linux it’s still garbage. Millions of people are stuck working with low-dpi screens. It’s not like you have that much power over your employer to ask for a better screen without him changing the whole fleet because all your coworkers now wants one. So I agree with you. In an ideal world, low-dpi should be something from the past. But it isn’t. And in our real world, the real shame is that designers (including font designers) stopped caring for the vast majority of people who don’t use a hi-dpi screen to work.

monkey_monkey 4y ago

I did the same, and have zero regrets. I've tried so many fonts over the last 15 years, but this one just works for me.

KronisLV 4y ago

Personally, I've stuck with free fonts most of the time. For programming, currently I tend to use: Liberation Mono: from the very same package of fonts that are included in LibreOffice, I find it to be surprisingly readable and easy on the eyes for most kinds of code or monospaced text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts PT Mono: while initially I really liked PT Sans and PT Serif separately (they're currently the fonts for my homepage/blog), their monospaced offering is also quite nice; albeit when there's some light colored text (e.g. comments) at the smaller font sizes, the full stop character can become a bit harder to see. Here's more information about them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT_Fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT_Fonts Here's a quick comparison, comparing the two fonts against Consolas and JetBrains Mono (with some Java code, taken from a throwaway project): https://imgur.com/a/mr9afqT https://imgur.com/a/mr9afqT Personally, out of all of them Liberation Mono feels like the most readable, whereas PT Mono just appeals to me stylistically on some level. However, paid fonts, like the linked one are also great - whatever feels more pleasant to stare at for a large number of hours per day!

nbk_2000 4y ago
Same here, I try out a lot of monospace fonts as they come along. But Liberation Mono just scratches all my itches so well. I do however enjoy setting comments using fonts that aren't monospaced (which I begrudgingly acknowledge Comic Sans is actually decent for). At some point though the old typographers adage of "people read best, what they read most" must impact our preferences.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  Ive been using proportional fonts for coding for more than a decade now, and I can’t go back to mono space. I just wish there was a proportional programming font with ligatures, but I’m ok doing without if it means going monospace.
- eps 4y ago
  Try Averia for the comments. In fact I would've loved to try a mono version of it if it were avaiable. http://iotic.com/averia/ http://iotic.com/averia/

muhammadusman 4y ago

I also paid for it, my first font I paid for just for aesthetics and personal enjoyment. I don't regret it. I use it anywhere and everywhere I can!

nerdponx 4y ago

$75 seems worth it for a lifetime of personal use/enjoyment.

filmgirlcw 4y ago

I just did the exact same thing. I've been thinking about it since it was first on Show HN a year ago. And I kept putting it off. Today they got me. And this isn't even the first monospaced font I've spent money on that I know I will probably not always use. I own Operator. Dank. Mono Lisa. But the design and the attention to detail with downloading as regards to the stylistic set defaults (for applications that don't follow/adhere/support stylistic sets, which is something I could write a whole rant on) makes me very happy to support this team.

shagie 4y ago
Dank mono annoys me except in one spot - conference presentation slides (where it still annoys me, but I can see it being useful). The italics as cursive is annoying - especially with the 's' that shows up in too many places. However, the difficulty of distinguishing italics from regular on a presentation I can mostly forgive it since I can now recognize the italics and that hint to whatever it is trying to show much more easily than if I was trying to figure out a color (I'm not color blind but that is an accessibility issue) or the 'is that tilted enough?' (and looking for a bit of nostalgia, https://dank.sh/ https://dank.sh/ now redirects to https://philpl.gumroad.com/l/dank-mono https://philpl.gumroad.com/l/dank-mono and while its done, it can be purchased again!)