[HN Gopher] Iosevka typeface for code, from code
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Iosevka typeface for code, from code
Author : kuschkufan
Score : 167 points
Date : 2023-07-19 12:44 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| kuschkufan wrote:
| Offers lots of customisation, great for terminal, great for code.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I've standardized on the mplus Nerd Font:
| https://www.programmingfonts.org/#mplus
|
| It's narrow, comes in a very light weight (I use weight 250 for
| coding), and works well in Emacs, VSCode, and iTerm2. I find that
| its bold and italics are easier to read than many other fonts,
| and that oO08 iIlL1 g9qCGQ are all distinguishable from each
| other.
|
| I used to use Source Code Pro but found that I wanted something
| that allowed me to view more in the same width windows.
|
| Another option is Victor Mono:
| https://www.programmingfonts.org/#victor-mono
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| > _Monospace Iosevka contains various stylistic sets to change
| the shape of certain characters_
|
| _That 's_ what's on display at the linked URL (if anyone else
| was confused)
|
| You can also select variants for specific characters (there's 42
| zeroes!):
| https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/blob/main/doc/character-...
| NikkiA wrote:
| > You can also select variants for specific characters (there's
| 42 zeroes!)
|
| Is there a browser that a page with a thousand .svg files will
| load in? because it ends up being a page of missing images and
| 'broken image' icons on every browser I've tried.
|
| Really a bad decision to present the choices that way, IMO.
| luis_fs_coelho wrote:
| I've using JetBrains Mono just because it has boldItalic and
| other fonts like Fira Code and Iosevka don't.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| What do you mean? According to the docs:
|
| > In all the monospace subfamilies, 9 weights (Thin to Heavy),
| 2 widths (Normal and Extended), and 3 slopes (Upright, Italic
| and Oblique) are included.
|
| If I set "style: Bold Italic" in my Alacritty config, the text
| becomes thick and slanted. Bold does only thick, italic only
| slanted.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| In my custom Iosevka variants configuration I have 90 fonts:
| three widths (condensed, normal, expanded); five weights
| (thin, light, regular, bold, black); different letter shapes
| for upright/italic/oblique (slope is also configurable) and
| for another "axis", normal (for general coding) vs. slab
| serif (fancy).
| rckt wrote:
| Looks nice, but seems like it has too much of customisation.
|
| I'm using Fira Code for multiple years now and the setup is super
| straightforward. Just install, add it to config, enable ligatures
| and you are good to go.
|
| Looking at the Iosevka page I'm just thinking what the hell is
| going on here? How do I even start choosing which variant to use?
| I like nice fonts, but I also like to have a clear way of doing
| things. Iosevka doesn't offer one. I guess it's there for a much
| more motivated aesthetes.
| xigoi wrote:
| Because if they don't, some Hacker News person will go "well
| this looks nice, but it has a two-storey 'a', so I can't use
| it".
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Yeah, I don't understand why they focus so much on this. I
| guess there's a market in true "font nerds" but most of us
| aren't going to fixate over these small decision points.
|
| That said, you really can just install the fonts and not worry
| about any of that. I have used iosevka-term since the first
| time I saw it on HN years ago and it remains my favorite fixed
| width font.
| techwizrd wrote:
| I agree. I suppose it is meant for different folks. I like that
| Fira Code is easy to set up, readable with good ligatures and
| powerline, and something I just don't need to think about.
| mcbuilder wrote:
| If you're on OSX you can most easily get it from font-awesome
| using brew.
|
| I love Iosevka, and well it has been only font I've used above
| Terminus and a pirated Pragmata Pro for coding, so don't let
| too many option hold you back from trying it if you like nice
| fonts.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| The name reminds me of Iosefka, an NPC in the game Bloodborne:
| https://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/Iosefka
|
| It appears these are two ways of spelling the same name, and that
| has made me curious about its etymology.
|
| I've not found much in the way of clues. Most of the search
| results are either in reference to the font or to the game.
|
| According to names.org, Iosefka is tagged with _Gender-Neutral_
| and _Hebrew_ : https://www.names.org/n/iosefka/about
|
| Does anyone here have one of these names? Can you share the story
| behind them?
| groovy2shoes wrote:
| I think it's a form of Joseph, with a Slavic diminutive suffix.
| Josef + -ka ("little Joseph", or "Joey").
|
| If that's the case, then the reason Iosevka and Iosefka would
| be variations of the same name is that, in many Slavic
| languages, voiced consonants typically become devoiced in
| clusters before unvoiced consonants. So they'd both sound the
| same, despite the spelling difference (according to English
| spelling rules, they'd sound more or less like Yosefka).
| brokenkebaby wrote:
| I don't know every Slavic language, but know a few. There are
| rules of transformation of sounds which can make -ph to
| become -f, or -p, while -v is very-very unlikely. And the
| fact that in some languages "v" can be pronounced as "f"
| before unvoiced is not really applicable here - it doesn't
| make "f" to become "v". I think it's just a randomly
| generated Slavic-looking name. The author is Chinese btw
| rebolek wrote:
| In Czech (but may be true for other Slavic languages, at
| least western ones):
|
| * Josef - male form
|
| * Josefa - female form
|
| * Josefka - diminutive female form
|
| so Iosevka to me looks like English spelling of Josefka
|
| If you're curious, male diminutive forms of Josef are:
| Josifek, Jozin, Jozka, Pepa, Pepik and about 100 others.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Thank you!
| chriswarbo wrote:
| I try new fonts every now and then, but always find myself going
| back to Droid Sans Mono (looks very clear at tiny sizes).
| However, I switched to Iosevka a month ago (found by Googling for
| narrow monospace fonts), since its narrow enough to fit 80
| columns in Emacs when my (Pine)phone's in portrait mode, and two
| 80-column buffers side-by-side in landscape mode :)
| interroboink wrote:
| My personal request for anyone developing a programmer's font: on
| your splash page, be sure to include prominent examples of these
| characters: "0OIl1|ij"
|
| I have no patience for a font that doesn't get this right, and
| only limited patience for a font that doesn't make it clear that
| they _did_ get it right.
|
| :::scuttles back to DejaVu Sans Mono good-enough-ness:::
| kzrdude wrote:
| There seems to be an overview at
| https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/blob/main/doc/stylistic-...
|
| though I would ask the same: which of those is the default, and
| if none of them is, why is there no comparison image?
| zargon wrote:
| The website has a better view of that.
| https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ Scroll down to the variants
| section, where you can choose presets and it will show the
| set of characters and highlight the ones that are modified in
| the selected set. Or select each variant individually. (Not
| present on mobile; view in desktop mode.)
| throwanem wrote:
| The nice thing about Iosevka is that you can customize those
| and many other glyphs to taste!
|
| I switched from DejaVu Sans Mono earlier this year, and haven't
| looked back - so much so that I set up Git LFS support on my
| Emacs init repo, just so I could add the custom-built .ttf and
| have Iosevka available on every machine where I do any
| meaningful work with text of any kind.
|
| Sure, DejaVu Sans Mono (Menlo, et al) are "good enough", and
| that's fine. For me at least, Iosevka is _great_.
| foundry27 wrote:
| I wasn't sure how to articulate this exact thought, but I
| wholeheartedly feel the same. Some of the quote characters ('
| vs ` for example) have been problematic for me in the past too,
| and even though more common special characters like ;:., are
| almost always distinct enough, it's nice when designers pay
| special attention to the core concerns of the target audience.
| pusewicz wrote:
| Been a huge fan of Envy Code R and Iosevka is just a natural
| progression. Loving that font!
| throwaway106382 wrote:
| Been using a customized Iosevka build for years and can't use
| anything else, and I've tried.
| pickledish wrote:
| One of my favorites! I like to use it in the terminal since it's
| such a skinny font, so things like log lines fit better on a tiny
| laptop screen
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| Iosevka is the best font I've used. I've repeatedly tried to
| switch, but I end up just circling back.
|
| PragmataPro is the only font that has come close, due to the
| author's obsessive optimization (including embedded pixmaps,
| something Iosevka lacks and may always lack).
|
| The pricing is a bit weird on PragmataPro, which scares me away
| from it. "Essential" includes no coding ligatures (if that's your
| thing), makes you pay for regular and bold separately and has no
| italic at 20 euros a whack. With ligatures, its 60 euros each
| style.
| gray_-_wolf wrote:
| With all these posts about fonts, I have to wonder, am I the
| weird one here for just using DejaVu Sans Mono for like past ten
| years and just, like, not caring that much? Does the font make
| that much of a difference?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I enjoy comparing new fonts to Consolas, and then going right
| back to Consolas. It helps me feel _justified_!
|
| And I hate ligatures as much as I hate table aliases, so
| Consolas suits me just fine. Although, DSM is a close second. I
| just wish its "<=>" were more distinguishable.
| layer8 wrote:
| Same here, just with Lucida Console. All those newfangled
| fonts aren't properly optimized and hinted for small
| sizes/low DPI.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| What do you think about Cascadia? It was commissioned
| directly as the "sequel" to Consolas and is interesting
| because it is open source (unlike Consolas). (Therefore
| cheaply cross-platform and web-safe, versus paying for
| Consolas licenses for non-Windows machines or websites.)
|
| You may have overlooked it before because one of the more
| advertised "sequel" features is ligatures, but Cascadia is
| one of the fonts that uses the Mono/Code naming scheme to
| turn on/off ligatures. ("Cascadia Mono" doesn't include the
| coding ligatures that "Cascadia Code" does.)
| simias wrote:
| I like to micromanage my dev environment, I have custom
| everything (terminal, editor, WM...) yet I'm on the same boat
| when it comes to fonts. DejaVu + Noto for CJK just works.
| DejaVu is just a good font.
| oweiler wrote:
| I've used Consolas for 10 years.
| gsliepen wrote:
| I'm that weird as well! My brain has optimized itself for
| reading DejaVu Sans Mono; I try other programming fonts now and
| then, but it's all been a disappointment. Also, no ligatures
| and 100% black/white, none of that gray-on-grey for me. I'm
| sure I am offending 98% of Hacker News readers by writing this
| :P
| SomeCallMeTim wrote:
| I also tend to switch to straight black and white. I don't
| get the desire for _less_ contrast.
|
| I do like ligatures, and I like checking out new fonts, but
| I'm not going to be offended if you don't. ;)
| gorjusborg wrote:
| My experience has been that there is a certain type of
| developer who likes to flex by showing they have new/neat
| tools.
|
| Not saying there is anything wrong with it, but for me it feels
| like to much of a distraction.
| BiggsHoson wrote:
| Also, I find that there just isn't a one best font, even for
| one person. There are just too many variables that effect how
| a font looks, not limited to the screen itself, the graphics
| controller, the software where I want to use the font.
| SomeCallMeTim wrote:
| Meh. I like nice fonts, but I never talk about what font I
| use.
|
| I don't even _know_ what font I 'm currently using, though I
| put some thought into choosing it at the time.
|
| Some of us just care about what our fonts look like. I'm
| loving the configurator with Iosevka; yes, I'll likely spend
| an hour tweaking a custom font, but after that I'll just be
| done and move on.
|
| There's no "flex" if I never even show anyone my dev
| environment or talk about what font I use. I think you're
| experiencing selection bias in thinking that only people who
| flex care about their fonts. ;)
| gausswho wrote:
| I am of a similiar mindset. I put an afternoon into
| choosing what font will inspire me to code to, about every
| couple years. I set it up, forget about it, tell no one
| since it would feel petty and personal.
|
| It'd be nice to have a word for something you care
| substantially about, but with fleeting desire and no desire
| to preen about.
|
| I am on Iosevka now partly because I can pull it from AUR
| in my setup scripts which is something not all do.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't obsess over it and I don't try to follow all the hip
| new programming fonts, but I do tend to change my IDE's font a
| couple of times per year. It feels like a bit of a palette
| cleanser, I suppose.
| throwanem wrote:
| I've used that font under several names, initially Bitstream's
| licensed version, for almost 20 years - until earlier this
| year, when I switched to Iosevka.
|
| It really is significantly more legible, especially in
| parens/braces/brackets and punctuation. Before, it was easy and
| common to mistype , for . or vice versa, and not notice until
| it failed to parse. Since, I've done that maybe twice.
| TylerE wrote:
| Once your vision starts to go a little bit, yea. The biggest
| thing that bugs me (assuming we're talking about a baseline
| more or less decent font) is the spacing. Like, "Sweden Sans"
| posted here yesterday is waaaaay too narrow to be comfrotable
| for me to read, much less write.
|
| I've been using IntelOne Mono for about 6 months now, and I
| like it a lot. So legible I've actually been able to drop my
| main editor and terminal fonts sizes down a notch or two, while
| remaining readable.
| throwanem wrote:
| I hear that - I use Iosevka comfortably at point sizes that
| haven't worked for me with DejaVu Sans Mono for _years_.
| imnel wrote:
| For me I don't mind a change every now and then as a font can
| make my coding experience feel "fresh" without needing to
| change a theme or something.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| It depends on how much of your time you spend looking at them.
| The bigger that quantity, the weirder it is to not put any
| thought into optimizing.
| innocenat wrote:
| Other than that nice font is nice on the eye when you are
| staring at them for hours on end, I find that Iosevka does
| improve my workflow because I could pack more on my screen.
| Before Iosevka I was using Fira Code (because of ligatures),
| and before that I was using Courier New/Consolas.
| lawn wrote:
| Same reason for me, although I used Hack for X years before
| that. I still think Hack looks more pleasing, but it's just
| so much wider than Iosevka I just can't go back.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| The terminal variant is great for CLI in my experience. It's tall
| and very information dense with programs like htop, glances, etc.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| this is brilliant!!
| factorialboy wrote:
| I've used Iosevka for many years. I love it's narrow but clear
| aesthetics. Makes vertically split tabs / windows more usable.
|
| Must admit that I am a font / typeface hopper, I usually switch
| between Iosevka, Jetbrains Mono and more recently Comic Mono.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Haha, what a coincidence! I mention Iosevka and then three hours
| later, here it is submitted:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36784005
| quechimba wrote:
| I switched from Pragmata Pro to Iosevka Term Curly Slab a few
| years ago and I'm really happy with it. It's easy to read and I
| can fit a lot of code on one screen.
| Schnouki wrote:
| I've used it for years almost everywhere (terminal, IDE, my blog,
| even DuckDuckGo/Kagi with Iosevka Aile) and I absolutely love it.
| Looks great everywhere, and highly readable.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I set it up on our company thinkpad t14 gen1 and the LCD panel
| + iosevka gives glowing precision in text editors.. it massages
| my brain quite brilliantly.
| karmakaze wrote:
| The interspersed .'s and color changes are extremely distracting
| to actually seeing the font samples.
| cjbprime wrote:
| I'm thankful for Iosevka, it's been great. I even like the quasi-
| proportional version for code, Iosevka Aile:
| https://chris.printf.net/iosevka-aile.png
| ashton314 wrote:
| If you want to see what kind of customizations you can do with
| Iosevka, here's the blend that I use daily:
| https://git.sr.ht/~ashton314/iosevka-output
|
| I essentially wanted Input Mono [1] but with more characters.
| Iosevka has a stylistic preset ("ss18") that sets the character
| variants to match the designs of Input. There's also the
| "extended" family, which matches the width almost perfectly,
| albeit I need the font size to be 13pt for Iosevka to match what
| Input looks like at 12pt. Go figure.
|
| [1]: https://input.djr.com/
| jorams wrote:
| Thanks you so much for this. I've been using Input for years,
| and the main things keeping me there were the line height and
| clarity at small font sizes. Your build makes Iosevka match
| those very, very closely. I think I've finally found my new
| code font. I sent a patch to fix the build for new versions of
| Iosevka :)
| bitwize wrote:
| I freakin' love Iosevka. Most monospace fonts are kind of boring
| and look like variants of IBM Letter Gothic. The bitmap fonts
| from back in the day had character, so I often use those for
| terminals but they don't fit well in graphical IDEs. Fonts like
| Iosevka, Envy Code R, and Terminus have that "character" and make
| spending time reading the code in them more joyful.
| enriquto wrote:
| Can you suggest any _large_ bitmap fonts for use in terminals?
| I find them much cleaner than antialiased (i.e., blurred)
| fonts.
|
| By "large", I mean that they are readable on a hidpi monitor
| without scaling. Thus at least of size 24 pixels, hopefully
| larger. So far the only one that I know is Terminus, which is
| not particularly beautiful.
| bitwize wrote:
| Closest I can come is ttyp0: https://people.mpi-
| inf.mpg.de/~uwe/misc/uw-ttyp0/ It goes up to 22px and is
| quite attractive.
|
| You can also use bdfscale to blow up an X11 bitmap font, but
| will have to contend with the larger pixels:
| https://github.com/philj56/bdfscale
|
| Alternatively, use a TTF/OTF "bitmap font" and scale it an
| integer multiple of its actual height. The fonts in the
| Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack are good for this:
| https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/
| xena wrote:
| I use a custom variant of Iosevka on my website and all of my
| side projects such as Arsene: https://arsene.fly.dev. I like it
| because it makes Iaso not look like laso.
| a-a-ron_b wrote:
| So many good things to say about Iosevka. The font is great and
| the "customizability" is top-notch.
|
| I created my own flavor of Iosevka called Monocode that I use
| everywhere a monospaced font makes sense.
|
| https://github.com/aaronmbos/monocode
| andai wrote:
| I use a custom Iosevka (ORW) from someone's ricing repo.
|
| I think it's a bit less narrow.
|
| https://github.com/s0la/orw/tree/master/.fonts
| nativeit wrote:
| I'm a font nerd, and this one is easily my favorite.
|
| As a Debian sysdmin, I don't do much in the way of pure coding,
| but I use terminals frequently, write Bash scripts,
| Dockerfiles/Docker Compose files, and generally engage with
| monospaced text daily. Iosevka has become my default over the
| last several months, to the extent that I have added its GitHub
| repo to my dotfiles and deploy it everywhere that I operate. It
| is one of the only narrow monospaced typefaces that doesn't look
| squished, but rather crisp and clean while being extremely
| efficient in its use of space. It's italics are stylish without
| being overly decorative, and its glyphs/Powerline support seem to
| just work across Linux, MacOS, and Windows.
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| This has been my goto font since Envy Code R.
|
| I appreciate that it is slightly thinner.
| jwr wrote:
| I forced myself to try it after years of using Input Mono Narrow
| (a really really good font), and was surprised to find that I
| like it even better than Input Mono.
|
| It's good stuff.
|
| If you have your favorite font and you find another font that
| seems interesting, I think it's important to force yourself to
| use something else for a week or two before you make a judgment.
| Habits die hard.
| dancemethis wrote:
| Since I've seen it (around HN, no less) years ago, it has been
| among the first few installations on every machine I handled.
|
| Beautiful. It feels tall in just the right way.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| This is fantastic! I've used JetBrains Mono for years now, but
| seeing that Iosevka can not only replicate it faithfully, but
| also allow me to apply my own tweaks makes me want to try Iosevka
| now!
| fold3 wrote:
| See also SARASA GOTHIC, a CJK programming font based on Iosevka
| and Source Han Sans.
|
| https://github.com/be5invis/Sarasa-Gothic
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(page generated 2023-07-19 23:02 UTC)