3 ms·

That is usually configurable at the terminal level- for example, both wezterm and ghostty have available configs to control this behavior.

jwilliams 7mo ago
Good to know. I’ve been using ghostty and generally not a fan of the code ligatures (or just too stubborn to adapt!).
- r_lee 7mo ago
  I'm not either. I think it may look "cool" visually but when trying to work with code with those in it, it seems odd, like that it's a single character even though it's not and it just breaks the flow
- pmxi 7mo ago
  I didn't like them either. Thankfully, they can easily be disabled. See my config: https://github.com/pmxi/dotfiles/blob/e779c5921fbe308fad0c95b29c76efdd930f2cc0/.config/ghostty/config#L4-L8 https://github.com/pmxi/dotfiles/blob/e779c5921fbe308fad0c95...
- adrian_b 7mo ago
  Because most of those who commented are among those who do not like ligatures, I must present a counterpoint, to diminish the statistical bias. Some people like ligatures, some people do not like them, but this does not matter, because any decent text editor or terminal emulator has a setting to enable or disable ligatures. Any good programming font must have ligatures, which will keep happy both kinds of users, those who like and those who dislike ligatures. I strongly hate the straitjacket forced by ASCII upon programming languages, which is the root cause of most ambiguous grammars that complicate the parsing of programming languages and increase the probability of bugs, and which has also forced the replacement of traditional mathematical symbols with less appropriate characters. Using Unicode for source programs is the best solution, but when having to use legacy programming languages in a professional setting, where the use of a custom preprocessor would be frowned upon, using fonts with ligatures is still an improvement over ASCII.
  - pwdisswordfishy 7mo ago
    A coding font is supposed to help you distinguish between characters, not confuse them for each other. Also, ASCII ligatures usually look worse than the proper Unicode character they are supposed to emulate. The often indecisive form they take (glyphs rearranged to resemble a different character, but still composed of original glyph shapes; weird proportions and spacing due to the font maintaining the column width of the separate ASCII code points) creates a strong uncanny valley effect. I wouldn't mind having "≤", "≠" or "⇒" tokens in my source code, but half-measures just don't cut it.
mcookly 7mo ago
> That is usually configurable at the terminal level And if you use Emacs, it's configurable at the buffer level. [1] This lets me build a version of Iosevka where `~=` and `!=` both become ligaturized but in different major modes, avoiding any confusion. [1]: https://github.com/mickeynp/ligature.el https://github.com/mickeynp/ligature.el
craftkiller 7mo ago
No need to rely on app-specific configs. You can disable it globally in your fontconfig. For example, this disables ligatures in the Cascadia Code font: <match target="font"> <test name="family" compare="eq" ignore-blanks="true"> <string>Cascadia Code</string> </test> <edit name="fontfeatures" mode="append"> <string>liga off</string> <string>dlig off</string> </edit> </match> Here is someone disabling ligatures for Noto Sans Mono: https://blahg.josefsipek.net/?p=610 https://blahg.josefsipek.net/?p=610

jwilliams 7mo ago

Good to know. I’ve been using ghostty and generally not a fan of the code ligatures (or just too stubborn to adapt!).

r_lee 7mo ago
I'm not either. I think it may look "cool" visually but when trying to work with code with those in it, it seems odd, like that it's a single character even though it's not and it just breaks the flow
pmxi 7mo ago
I didn't like them either. Thankfully, they can easily be disabled. See my config: https://github.com/pmxi/dotfiles/blob/e779c5921fbe308fad0c95b29c76efdd930f2cc0/.config/ghostty/config#L4-L8 https://github.com/pmxi/dotfiles/blob/e779c5921fbe308fad0c95...
adrian_b 7mo ago
Because most of those who commented are among those who do not like ligatures, I must present a counterpoint, to diminish the statistical bias. Some people like ligatures, some people do not like them, but this does not matter, because any decent text editor or terminal emulator has a setting to enable or disable ligatures. Any good programming font must have ligatures, which will keep happy both kinds of users, those who like and those who dislike ligatures. I strongly hate the straitjacket forced by ASCII upon programming languages, which is the root cause of most ambiguous grammars that complicate the parsing of programming languages and increase the probability of bugs, and which has also forced the replacement of traditional mathematical symbols with less appropriate characters. Using Unicode for source programs is the best solution, but when having to use legacy programming languages in a professional setting, where the use of a custom preprocessor would be frowned upon, using fonts with ligatures is still an improvement over ASCII.
- pwdisswordfishy 7mo ago
  A coding font is supposed to help you distinguish between characters, not confuse them for each other. Also, ASCII ligatures usually look worse than the proper Unicode character they are supposed to emulate. The often indecisive form they take (glyphs rearranged to resemble a different character, but still composed of original glyph shapes; weird proportions and spacing due to the font maintaining the column width of the separate ASCII code points) creates a strong uncanny valley effect. I wouldn't mind having "≤", "≠" or "⇒" tokens in my source code, but half-measures just don't cut it.

mcookly 7mo ago

> That is usually configurable at the terminal level And if you use Emacs, it's configurable at the buffer level. [1] This lets me build a version of Iosevka where `~=` and `!=` both become ligaturized but in different major modes, avoiding any confusion. [1]: https://github.com/mickeynp/ligature.el https://github.com/mickeynp/ligature.el

craftkiller 7mo ago

No need to rely on app-specific configs. You can disable it globally in your fontconfig. For example, this disables ligatures in the Cascadia Code font: <match target="font"> <test name="family" compare="eq" ignore-blanks="true"> <string>Cascadia Code</string> </test> <edit name="fontfeatures" mode="append"> <string>liga off</string> <string>dlig off</string> </edit> </match> Here is someone disabling ligatures for Noto Sans Mono: https://blahg.josefsipek.net/?p=610 https://blahg.josefsipek.net/?p=610