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JetBrains Mono Typeface
- uticus 3y agofwiw most (all?) JetBrains IDEs have a setting to enable/disable the ligatures. Doesn't apply to everyone but I'm assuming some familiar with the JetBrains font will also be using some other things JetBrains makes.
- gaws 3y agoDupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22053998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22053998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36788767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36788767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22061018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22061018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32803484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32803484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31192775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31192775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22093393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22093393
- tentacleuno 3y agoI use this type face on pretty much everything that involves reading or writing code. It's great! Even comes with ligatures. Victor Mono[0] is another great monospace font. [0]: https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/ https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/
- dheera 3y agoIt does look good but oof I dislike the cursive italics. I find cursive hard to read, since I never really learned to write it, and I constantly trip over letters like "s" and "r" that don't look liker their normal counterparts.
- surgical_fire 3y agoWell, the cursive is optional anyway. Also not my cup of tea, and I write in cursive. Font looks awesome otherwise.
- Panqueca_do_mar 3y agoCheck out Fira Code - it's another good programming font. I don't think it has the cursive italics thing.
- keehun 3y agoIt's weird how much I've come to like this font. And like @tentacleuno, I use it pretty much anywhere and everywhere I can get away using it.
- jamies 3y agoThis, and Roboto Mono, are my two desert island monospace typefaces. Are you allowed to have two desert island mono typefaces? I don't think I could could choose between them.
- boomskats 3y agoIf you were to extend it to three then this would be me, but with the addition of agave and mononoki.
- BewareTheYiga 3y agoI love this font, but I am currently giving Commit Mono (https://commitmono.com/ https://commitmono.com/) a spin. JetBrains did a great job.
- jpgvm 3y agoThey are very similar typefaces I think one can be quite happy with either.
- cli_shall 3y agoOooh, that does look great. Very similar to JB Mono, but I like the defaults in Commit Mono a bit better overall. The asterisk, the positioning of the quote marks, the slashed 0 instead of dotted. Great alternative. A side-grade, maybe. Thanks!
- unshavedyak 3y agoI kinda love the fancy-silly features (ligatures/etc) so i didn't give CommitMono a try. BUT, i adore the smart kerning. Any other fonts with smart kerning?
- Cupprum 3y agoI never actually understood the whole fuss about fonts. I tried playing around with them few years ago and i never noticed that something is easier to read with some font or another, especially in the long term. Whenever i started using some font, i got completely used to it in few days. Therefore i just use the default fonts now.
- dheera 3y agoTo each is own but I'm a huge design and typography nut and when my entire physical workspace and software interface looks aesthetically pleasing, I'm much more inclined to actually do work.
- chavesn 3y agoThe ligatures are really interesting, but at a glance I process them so much slower than the raw characters, especially the ones that change the graphical semantics such as <= vs ≤. Does anyone have experience getting used to these and 1) does it end up faster? 2) once you are used to it is it harder than it was before to process the raw characters when reading code in fonts that don't have the same ligatures?
- LesZedCB 3y agoi don't think of it as faster or slower to read, it's just more aesthetically pleasing to me. i use cascadia code in vscode with ligatures enabled, it's really nice looking.
- LinasKo 3y agoLigatures became one of my favourite features after trying out Fira Code. It felt like an obvious improvement that I was yearning for, for years. I guess my brain likes having distinct continuous symbols to represent different operations - it reminds of of math in school & university. And I don't see a problem during editing, knowing they're made of multiple symbols. And yes - I feel that I do struggle much more without them. Completely out-of-the-blue, unproven guess - my mind is used to learning new symbols quick, from all the gaming I've done. And it's much easier to learn a new symbol that's cohesive, continuous & unique, rather than having to read disjoint characters and figure out a different meaning for them.
- hamaluik 3y agoIt took me a bit to warm up to them, but now I find myself relying on them to more quickly spot errors, so yes it ends up faster. Somewhat counterintuitively, I find the ligature characters easier to process at a glance and see if there's a problem or not (I suspect its something along the lines of my brain looks at "<=" as two separate characters, one after the other, and has to process each in serial then combine them into the concept of "less than or equal to", whereas the ≤ is a single character that goes straight to the "less than or equal to" concept in the same way its easier to remember the number "six hundred ninety-three" than "six, nine, three". I also find it way easier to spot the "≡" vs the "===" in JS land, which surprised me but here I am. I wouldn't say its harder to go back, but it does make me do a double take. Overall I would say the effect is quite minor and I'm just fine without the ligatures, but given the option I would enable / prefer them.
- rafaelflores 3y agoI wish they could have a brackets change like there is for Input font family.
- microflash 3y agoYou can always create a request for new character variants. They are pretty receptive of community requests.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoThere are a lot of code fonts on HN today. Rather than make a new post I will talk about some of my favorite that are a little less common. None of these are free I don't think. Cartograph CF - The one I've been using for code for years. Very readable, almost "comic mono"-like choices of some of the lower case glyphs but in a good way. All the character is in the italic which you will either love or hate. Quadraat sans mono - The entire quadraat family is a collection of masterpieces imo, but are generally too distinctive to be appropriate for most public-facing work. But it's your computer so who cares. I use the mono sans one for my terminal. The lowercase f seems so out of place there but you learn to love it. Alegreya sans - Not a mono font, but it almost is so if you've ever flirted with proportional fonts for code this is a fun one to try. There is a lot of careful line width variation that gives a lot of the appearance and readability advantages of serifs but keeps most of the visual coherence of sans. I like all of these because they feel more like normal fonts rather than code fonts. They have careful variation that adds character and improves readability for me. I've switched to an almost-no-color code theme that uses font weight instead, and the details like this become more important that way. And then only kind of related but if you want to use unusual fonts in your terminal but you have a complex prompt setup, install font forge and learn to use something like https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/blob/master/font-patcher https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/blob/master/font-pat... to patch in the extra characters. This can also solve your "I love this font but want a dotted zero" type problems as well. Small skill investment for a small return over a long period of time. You'll always be using fonts.
- mjmsmith 3y agoI've been using Operator Mono SSM [https://www.typography.com/fonts/operator/overview https://www.typography.com/fonts/operator/overview], but Cartograph CF is really nice and reasonably priced.
- BossingAround 3y agoI don't get the fuss about the JB typeface. I tried it, couldn't get used to the ligatures, and in the end, stopped using it after a few days.
- zorgmonkey 3y agoThey include versions without the ligatures for exactly that reason. It is the files with NL in the name.
- politelemon 3y agoNot a fan of the ligatures, it's a pleasant looking garnish that requires translating to its underlying parts. So it would probably work for one person but butb not so great when sharing screen time with others, then it just becomes a distraction.
- dheera 3y agoJetBrains Mono NL is the no-ligature version of it and it is also included in the official zip file. Personally it is what I use, I like its aesthetic but I also dislike ligatures for coding.
- xigoi 3y agoIt doesn't require translating, that's the whole point. In most lanĝuages, >= actually means ≥, so it makes sense to render it like that.
- _hao 3y agoFor me nothing can dethrone Inconsolata[0], there's just something elegant about it that I haven't found in other fonts I've tried. Been using it for almost ten years now. Also I don't like ligatures... [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconsolata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconsolata
- CharlesW 3y ago> Also I don't like ligatures... Ligatures are optional, so you don’t have to let the existence of those glyphs stop you from using an otherwise-better(-for-you) typeface. Additionally, in VSCode at least, there are extensions that give you even more contextual control.
- henriquecm8 3y agoFor Intellij IDEs, there's the plugin Ligatures Limited.
- whatever1 3y agoWas at the same camp but when I moved to retina screens source code pro seemed a bit better to me. Don’t ask why. It just feels right lol.
- _hao 3y agoI don't like fonts where the zero has a dot (or nothing). I need to have that slash in my zeroes.
- rg111 3y agoI really like using Cascadia Code PL Nerd Font. What do most people use?
- replwoacause 3y agoThis. I was late to trying it out but just started with it last week and love it. Right up there with Menlo for me.
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- bastardoperator 3y agoI stick with https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads, I need the glyphs. This would be a good candidate for nerdification.
- dicytea 3y agoIf you use Kitty or Wezterm, you don't need patched fonts. For Kitty, just install the Symbols Nerd Font (it's a fontset that contains only nerd symbols). For Wezterm, you don't need to do anything, the glyphs are already built in.
- teilo 3y agoJetBrains Mono has been nerdified, in four varieties, for a long time, and is already there. I use it with oh-my-posh. There are non-ligature and non-monospace (for icons only - everything else is monospace) versions.
- elromulous 3y agoI'm not even a Mac user by choice, but Monaco[0] has been a favorite of mine for years. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco_(typeface) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco_(typeface)
- digdigdag 3y agoYep. I have Monaco installed on my Linux and Windows machines as a basic requirement for doing any sort of plain text editing.
- twleo 3y agoMe too. The only con is that Monaco does not have bold variants. Fortunately, someone has created them! https://github.com/vjpr/monaco-bold https://github.com/vjpr/monaco-bold
- TacticalCoder 3y agoMonaco is very good and, to me, the way Monaco does the lowercase 'l' letter is the only proper way to do it. Several other coding fonts thankfully get the lowercase 'l' right, like JetBrains Mono btw.
- pb060 3y agoAll roads lead to Monaco. I miss the bitmap version though.
- minimaul 3y agoMonaco’s my go to coding font and has been for at least 15 years. Really love the letter forms, and it’s just so immediately readable for me. But I don’t really like it in terminals - I use SF Mono there.
- knowsuchagency 3y agoI love JetBrains Mono
- Canada 3y agoMe too. Just install this on Windows boxes and TUIs in putty are good.
- lxe 3y agoNothing beats Iosevka (https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka) for me. It's narrow yet super readable, making great use of screen real estate. Lots of customization, ligatures, weights, and a nerd font patch for terminal.
- swah 3y agoYes, I guess what I like it that it still looks good when I'm on the ultrawide, low DPI display. On the Mac display all those fonts look great.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoWhat's new here?
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago(2020)
- Alifatisk 3y agoBeen using this Font for a couple of years now, it's amazing.
- Lorin 3y agoPersonally not a fan of ligatures in monotype typefaces in general, although I understand why some may like them.
- ulyssys 3y agoThere are non-ligatured variants included in the download.
- snyda 3y agoI think that JetBrains Mono and Cascadia Code are simply the two best fonts for programming.
- presbyterian 3y agoJetBrains Mono is nice, but it's a little too sharp, and it's too tightly packed IMO. Cascadia Code is a little better, but nothing beats Menlo for me.
- rob74 3y agoI personally prefer classic "typewriter-style" monospace fonts - "sans-serif" monospace fonts always look unbalanced to me, because they avoid serifs as much as possible, but then are forced to use them to avoid thin glyphs like i, j, l, 1 etc looking "lost". Unfortunately the designers seem to focus on sans-serif anyway. One good contender with serifs is "Go Mono" - it also uses the trick of increasing the height of lowercase letters to be more readable at small sizes, and it notably doesn't have ligatures. It also doesn't have a fancy demo page, but here's the blog post introducing the Go font family: https://go.dev/blog/go-fonts https://go.dev/blog/go-fonts
- HumblyTossed 3y agoIt looks too ... squished to me.
- gjvc 3y agoI do love conversations about fonts
- saclark11 3y agoI see a lot of folks in this thread lamenting the usage of ligatures, but note that the downloaded set of font files includes a "JetBrainsMonoNL" version of all variants, which does not include ligatures ("NL", as in, "No Ligatures"). I do not like ligatures either, yet this is my favorite monospaced font. I use JetBrainsMonoNL in all the places.
- no_wizard 3y agoI'm starting to wonder if this is becoming spaces vs tabs. It seems silly to heavily critique a font because it supports ligatures and inversely seems silly to critique a font because it does not. Most fonts with ligatures can be used without them anyway, making the whole thing moot
- sebastiandb 3y agoHowever, not all IDEs, text editors, and terminal emulators support disabling the use of ligatures, so it's often easiest to just switch to a font that doesn't include them if you don't want them.
- debaserab2 3y agoJust switch the font variant to NL - no need for editor support.
- ammar2 3y agoDoesn't that depend on the font author providing a NL version? e.g if you want the FiraCode improvements[1] over FiraMono without the ligatures. Without editor support, you would have to build it yourself since they don't distribute a NL version. [1] https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode#whats-in-the-box https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode#whats-in-the-box
- _jyty 3y agoThat's what I mean; it's often easier to use a font that doesn't have ligatures (like the NL variant) than to use a font with ligatures and hope your editor lets you disable ligatures.
- replwoacause 3y agoEnvy Code R is another favorite of mine
- satvikpendem 3y agoIs there really a better typeface than Apple's San Francisco Mono? I use it on all my machines, even my Windows and Linux ones. There are also versions with patched glyphs so you don't get boxes when trying to render certain characters.
- harrygeez 3y agoBetter is subjective but I was too a big fan until Fira Code. I love ligatures
- satvikpendem 3y agoI'm not a fan of ligatures personally, they obscure the raw source code that I want to see rather than a layer on top of the code.
- harrygeez 3y agoLigatures are optional. Don't let that detract from its excellence.
- minimaul 3y agoSF Mono and Monaco are my two all-time favourite monospaced fonts - weirdly, I really like SF Mono for terminals and Monaco for code editors!
- cempaka 3y agoYep I use this one everywhere I can on my Macs, and Roboto Mono as a decent approximation everywhere else. Discovered it because I accidentally opened something in XCode one day and went "wow, that's a nice font!"
- Panqueca_do_mar 3y agoYou should check out Fira Code if you get a chance - another great (imo) programming font. Nerd Fonts has a version of it too if you need the glyphs. Also it has ligatures too which I love.
- KronisLV 3y agoIn my eyes, Liberation Mono is still the best programming font, due to how readable it is even in smaller sizes (and it comes with LibreOffice I think): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts There's also the Cousine version, which is more or less the same, both are also metrically compatible with Courier New: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croscore_fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croscore_fonts After that, I rather enjoy PT Mono, except that the full stop (dot) symbol feels too small, I actually use the PT Fonts for most of my personal webpages because they're decently readable and not too stylized, nor too boring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT_Fonts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT_Fonts But frankly, there's a lot of good fonts out there and it's entirely a matter of taste. Some like ligatures, some don't. Some like monospaced fonts, others like proportional ones. It's also really cool when the OS itself lets you set your font preferences for most applications that you're going to use, I catch myself wishing it'd be easy to do that for all of the JetBrains IDEs and other dev tools at the same time, though. Maybe a simple GUI program or a script that'd let me set those particular preferences for all of my editors in one go.
- sedatk 3y agoBerkeley Mono has been my go to font for a while now. https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/ https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/
- jiehong 3y agoI just prefer Berkeley Mono. https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/ https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- adrian_b 3y agoWhile now there are many other good typefaces for programming languages, which are more or less equivalent to JetBrains Mono when restricted to the ASCII character set, JetBrains Mono has much better coverage of various Unicode blocks, e.g. of the mathematical symbols, and this is why I normally prefer it.
- achr2 3y agoI greatly appreciate Jetbrains' software. But the only thing that I care about in a code font is balancing legibility with maximizing columns of text. Their overlay comparison to consolas fails on my main concern.
- hboon 3y agoI have been using it for a few months, both in JetBrains products as well as in Neovim. Looks great. I'm comfortable with their style of ligatures.
- 19h 3y agoAbsolutely the best font I’ve ever used. I can easily read letters from far, from close, in bright light, in darkness.. used it since day one. Also using it in my terminal. Thanks JetBrains, I love it.
- aptenoforst 3y agoThis was my favorite font ever, made me stop font hopping...until I found that italic A and italic O are too similar, now I'm back to don't hopping.
- rmk 3y agoThis has quickly become my favorite, replacing my previous favorite, Monaco, in the terminal also.
- firecall 3y agoI like to try out coding typefaces, but always find myself returning to Apple’s SF Mono. I’m a Mac user so….