6 ms·

One thing I really appreciate about fonts is the low-stakes nature of trying them out. Installing is easy, and doesn't take much space, you set your editor and

One thing I really appreciate about fonts is the low-stakes nature of trying them out. Installing is easy, and doesn't take much space, you set your editor and try it out. There's no lock-in, switching back takes zero effort. So I'm always keen to give them a go, some stick, some don't. For what it's worth I'm in the no-ligature group. I want to see => not some ligature. But again that's subjective and there's room for all at the table.

Dalewyn 3y ago
To this day I haven't seen a monospaced font superior to Courier New. And before anyone asks: No, this isn't a meme. Yes, I'm 300% serious.
- sublinear 3y ago
  There's a vectorized version of Monaco with pixel-perfect hinting when anti-aliasing is disabled that I've been using for years now. I don't remember where I got it from though. It's beautifully legible at any size.
  - sitkack 3y ago
    You have to be trolling us. Literally the fish that got away story for fonts.
    - flomo 3y ago
      If you want to go fishing on this, one hole is Apple's old low-end printer line. The printer disks had expanded versions of the 'city' fonts which never shipped with the OS.
  - sen 3y ago
    Could you share the font files? I’m curious to see it.
  - alex-moon 3y ago
    I was trying to remember the Apple font I used to download for use with IDEs in Linux back in the day because it was by far the best for programming I'd ever seen. Monaco must have been the one.
  - naet 3y ago
    I'd love to see it
- KronisLV 3y ago
  > To this day I haven't seen a monospaced font superior to Courier New. Liberation Mono. Metrics that match Courier New, very legible at all font sizes, easy on the eyes and consistent, wide character support, free, none of that ligatures stuff (personal preference). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts Some might also like Cousine as an alternative, a version called FiraCousine also supports ligatures for those who want them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croscore_fonts https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croscore_fonts
  - 29athrowaway 3y ago
    I didn't know about the Croscore fonts, thanks. They look very similar to the Liberation fonts.
  - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
    Liberation Mono is not bad. Sadly, Liberation Sans is a no-go because it lacks crossbars on the capital "i". Such an annoying failing of so many sans fonts.
    - KronisLV 3y ago
      > Such an annoying failing of so many sans fonts. Here's an example of some fonts, for anyone curious: https://i.imgur.com/jYA6jt3.png https://i.imgur.com/jYA6jt3.png Some fonts like Arial are bad at this, capital "I" and lowercase "L" look the same. Calibri and Liberation sans both have slight differences, but not enough to not be confusing. Some fonts like Open Sans have crossbars on capital "I", which solves this problem. But that's not the only solution, fonts like PT Sans have a different looking lowercase "L" which is different enough not to cause confusion. Then again, technically you could also run into issues with the vertical line symbol "|". Also, PT Mono is a nice font, but has issues with a small full stop symbol at smaller sizes (not as pronounced as Liberation Mono, annoying): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT_Fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT_Fonts
      - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
- nyanpasu64 3y ago
  Have you tried Courier Prime, with a less anemic weight and optional O0 and Il1 differentiation? (Though it has janky hinting on Windows.)
- deafpolygon 3y ago
  The only issue I have is with the 'weight' of Courier New. It's too thin for me to be able to read. If it were just a hair thicker and had proper ligatures, I might use it.
  - kps 3y ago
    That's because it was digitized wrong, from the metal rather than from the effect of the metal smacking a ribbon onto paper.
- Shorel 3y ago
  To this day, there isn't a font that I hate more than I hate Courier New. Don't know why, it is of course not logical, but it is.
  - ateng 3y ago
    Probably not the font itself but the environment around it when you see it? You usually sees it as the default monospace typeface in an old windows environment, probably with no anti-aliasing and with low resolution screen. That combination is an eyesore. Courier New in an modern environment, with modern text rendering and anti-aliasing on high res screen is actually not bad at all.
    - bluedino 3y ago
      I see it in other people's PuTTY sessions. It's so bad. Use Consolas, or Droid Mono, Lucida Console, almost anything. Courier is so thin and terrible. Combine that with the default color scheme of most Linux terminals...ugh. Maximize that terminal window on a 16:9 display when connected to a device that only gives 80 characters wide output as the final mail in the coffin.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- flenserboy 3y ago
  Too thin for me. I prefer regular old Courier.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Allow me to introduce to you, Courier Prime: https://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/ https://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/ It's slightly thicker to more closely match what Courier from a typewriter actually looked like on a page with the ink bleed -- Courier New was modeled after the typewriter forms, not the result on the page, which to me has always been a massive error. And Prime has beautiful, actual italics.
- beaugunderson 3y ago
  I really like Courier New but I like DejaVu Sans Mono (https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/ https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/) more. :)
- bluedino 3y ago
  Courier makes my eyes bleed.
- michaelcampbell 3y ago
  > To this day I haven't seen a monospaced font superior to Courier New. "To this day I haven't seen a monospaced font that I like more than Courier New", surely. What is your quantitative measure for this, and what are the values of the other fonts you've tried?
CGamesPlay 3y ago
The absolute worst is when a monospace font puts fi into a ligature with a width of 1 character, entirely defeating the purpose of being a monospaced font.
- tasuki 3y ago
  I have never seen that happen. Wouldn't use.
- grzm 3y ago
  Can you provide an example of the font doing this? Substitution of individual characters with ligatures is in my experience a feature of the typesetting/display engine (which decides how to represent the "bytes" as glyphs), not the font itself. Indeed, this ligature substation is often something you can toggle in whatever application you're using if it's capable of doing the substitution at all.
  - CGamesPlay 3y ago
    I don't use ligatures at all, but I have seen it on websites. So perhaps it's the CSS of the website that has decided to do this. I don't have any specific examples off hand, but my mental picture puts it on sites that also use this style of font: https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/ https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/ (although typing fi into the sandbox on the site doesn't exhibit the behavior).
    - grzm 3y ago
      Yup. It's the browser that's choosing to display this. As 'gdwatson pointed out, the font can indicate which ligatures are available, but whether or not the substation occurs also depends on the typesetting engine.
      - spockz 3y ago
        So then it is the responsibility of the font to make sure that when a ligature that it made available is used that is displayed as two characters wide instead of one?
amelius 3y ago
Thank deity that we don't have package managers for fonts.
- alexmyczko 3y ago
  Let me present you: https://github.com/alexmyczko/fnt https://github.com/alexmyczko/fnt
- KerrAvon 3y ago
  we’ve had them for a very long time, actually https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Font/DA_Mover https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Font/DA_Mover
- alwillis 3y ago
  > Thank deity that we don't have package managers for fonts. I use the Homebrew package manager on macOS to install fonts. Probably works the same way when running Homebrew on Linux. How I install one of my favorite fonts: brew install font-meslo-lg-nerd-font
- beaugunderson 3y ago
  I'd love one, honestly. Fonts do get updates, especially fonts patched with the Nerd Fonts extensions... would love to be able to update mine in one go.
lofaszvanitt 3y ago
3 years later: oops it had an unintentional backdoor, we didn't know about that. lol.
soerxpso 3y ago
> I want to see => not some ligature. But again that's subjective and there's room for all at the table. The way you put this is funny, because your => renders as a ligature for anyone with a ligature font as their default font in their browser (me).

Dalewyn 3y ago

To this day I haven't seen a monospaced font superior to Courier New. And before anyone asks: No, this isn't a meme. Yes, I'm 300% serious.

sublinear 3y ago
There's a vectorized version of Monaco with pixel-perfect hinting when anti-aliasing is disabled that I've been using for years now. I don't remember where I got it from though. It's beautifully legible at any size.
- sitkack 3y ago
  You have to be trolling us. Literally the fish that got away story for fonts.
  - flomo 3y ago
    If you want to go fishing on this, one hole is Apple's old low-end printer line. The printer disks had expanded versions of the 'city' fonts which never shipped with the OS.
- sen 3y ago
  Could you share the font files? I’m curious to see it.
- alex-moon 3y ago
  I was trying to remember the Apple font I used to download for use with IDEs in Linux back in the day because it was by far the best for programming I'd ever seen. Monaco must have been the one.
- naet 3y ago
  I'd love to see it
KronisLV 3y ago
> To this day I haven't seen a monospaced font superior to Courier New. Liberation Mono. Metrics that match Courier New, very legible at all font sizes, easy on the eyes and consistent, wide character support, free, none of that ligatures stuff (personal preference). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts Some might also like Cousine as an alternative, a version called FiraCousine also supports ligatures for those who want them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croscore_fonts https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croscore_fonts
- 29athrowaway 3y ago
  I didn't know about the Croscore fonts, thanks. They look very similar to the Liberation fonts.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  Liberation Mono is not bad. Sadly, Liberation Sans is a no-go because it lacks crossbars on the capital "i". Such an annoying failing of so many sans fonts.
  - KronisLV 3y ago
    > Such an annoying failing of so many sans fonts. Here's an example of some fonts, for anyone curious: https://i.imgur.com/jYA6jt3.png https://i.imgur.com/jYA6jt3.png Some fonts like Arial are bad at this, capital "I" and lowercase "L" look the same. Calibri and Liberation sans both have slight differences, but not enough to not be confusing. Some fonts like Open Sans have crossbars on capital "I", which solves this problem. But that's not the only solution, fonts like PT Sans have a different looking lowercase "L" which is different enough not to cause confusion. Then again, technically you could also run into issues with the vertical line symbol "|". Also, PT Mono is a nice font, but has issues with a small full stop symbol at smaller sizes (not as pronounced as Liberation Mono, annoying): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT_Fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT_Fonts
    - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
nyanpasu64 3y ago
Have you tried Courier Prime, with a less anemic weight and optional O0 and Il1 differentiation? (Though it has janky hinting on Windows.)
deafpolygon 3y ago
The only issue I have is with the 'weight' of Courier New. It's too thin for me to be able to read. If it were just a hair thicker and had proper ligatures, I might use it.
- kps 3y ago
  That's because it was digitized wrong, from the metal rather than from the effect of the metal smacking a ribbon onto paper.
Shorel 3y ago
To this day, there isn't a font that I hate more than I hate Courier New. Don't know why, it is of course not logical, but it is.
- ateng 3y ago
  Probably not the font itself but the environment around it when you see it? You usually sees it as the default monospace typeface in an old windows environment, probably with no anti-aliasing and with low resolution screen. That combination is an eyesore. Courier New in an modern environment, with modern text rendering and anti-aliasing on high res screen is actually not bad at all.
  - bluedino 3y ago
    I see it in other people's PuTTY sessions. It's so bad. Use Consolas, or Droid Mono, Lucida Console, almost anything. Courier is so thin and terrible. Combine that with the default color scheme of most Linux terminals...ugh. Maximize that terminal window on a 16:9 display when connected to a device that only gives 80 characters wide output as the final mail in the coffin.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
flenserboy 3y ago
Too thin for me. I prefer regular old Courier.
crazygringo 3y ago
Allow me to introduce to you, Courier Prime: https://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/ https://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/ It's slightly thicker to more closely match what Courier from a typewriter actually looked like on a page with the ink bleed -- Courier New was modeled after the typewriter forms, not the result on the page, which to me has always been a massive error. And Prime has beautiful, actual italics.
beaugunderson 3y ago
I really like Courier New but I like DejaVu Sans Mono (https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/ https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/) more. :)
bluedino 3y ago
Courier makes my eyes bleed.
michaelcampbell 3y ago
> To this day I haven't seen a monospaced font superior to Courier New. "To this day I haven't seen a monospaced font that I like more than Courier New", surely. What is your quantitative measure for this, and what are the values of the other fonts you've tried?

CGamesPlay 3y ago

The absolute worst is when a monospace font puts fi into a ligature with a width of 1 character, entirely defeating the purpose of being a monospaced font.

tasuki 3y ago
I have never seen that happen. Wouldn't use.
grzm 3y ago
Can you provide an example of the font doing this? Substitution of individual characters with ligatures is in my experience a feature of the typesetting/display engine (which decides how to represent the "bytes" as glyphs), not the font itself. Indeed, this ligature substation is often something you can toggle in whatever application you're using if it's capable of doing the substitution at all.
- CGamesPlay 3y ago
  I don't use ligatures at all, but I have seen it on websites. So perhaps it's the CSS of the website that has decided to do this. I don't have any specific examples off hand, but my mental picture puts it on sites that also use this style of font: https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/ https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/ (although typing fi into the sandbox on the site doesn't exhibit the behavior).
  - grzm 3y ago
    Yup. It's the browser that's choosing to display this. As 'gdwatson pointed out, the font can indicate which ligatures are available, but whether or not the substation occurs also depends on the typesetting engine.
    - spockz 3y ago
      So then it is the responsibility of the font to make sure that when a ligature that it made available is used that is displayed as two characters wide instead of one?

amelius 3y ago

Thank deity that we don't have package managers for fonts.

alexmyczko 3y ago
Let me present you: https://github.com/alexmyczko/fnt https://github.com/alexmyczko/fnt
KerrAvon 3y ago
we’ve had them for a very long time, actually https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Font/DA_Mover https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Font/DA_Mover
alwillis 3y ago
> Thank deity that we don't have package managers for fonts. I use the Homebrew package manager on macOS to install fonts. Probably works the same way when running Homebrew on Linux. How I install one of my favorite fonts: brew install font-meslo-lg-nerd-font
beaugunderson 3y ago
I'd love one, honestly. Fonts do get updates, especially fonts patched with the Nerd Fonts extensions... would love to be able to update mine in one go.

lofaszvanitt 3y ago

3 years later: oops it had an unintentional backdoor, we didn't know about that. lol.

soerxpso 3y ago

> I want to see => not some ligature. But again that's subjective and there's room for all at the table. The way you put this is funny, because your => renders as a ligature for anyone with a ligature font as their default font in their browser (me).