[HN Gopher] Font Comparison: Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono vs. JetB...
___________________________________________________________________
Font Comparison: Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono vs. JetBrains Mono and
Fira Code
Author : maybebyte
Score : 153 points
Date : 2025-07-22 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.anthes.is)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.anthes.is)
| maybebyte wrote:
| After redesigning my website to use Atkinson Hyperlegible fonts,
| I switched my terminal and code editor to the monospace variant
| to properly test it. After a month of testing and positive
| experiences, I felt motivated to investigate further and write an
| article comparing Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono to JetBrains Mono
| and Fira Code.
|
| The visual comparisons use examples from an accessibility paper
| on homoglyphs and mirror glyphs. I chose JetBrains Mono and Fira
| Code as a baseline, since many developers use these fonts and
| find them familiar.
|
| While Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono excels at character distinction,
| nothing is perfect. I detail trade-offs in the "Caveats" section,
| below the installation instructions.
|
| I'm curious to hear others' experiences and thoughts. I'm
| fascinated by what role font choice plays in legibility and
| accessibility, but the research is relatively sparse in this
| area.
| esafak wrote:
| I would link to the downloads in the opening paragraph.
|
| My impression is that while legible it is too fat. You'll
| notice that Fira Code and JetBrains Mono are similarly wide --
| and narrower than Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono.
| maybebyte wrote:
| Sure, I'll add it in. I'll post the links here as well just
| in case:
|
| https://github.com/googlefonts/atkinson-hyperlegible-next-
| mo...
|
| I'd recommend getting it from there rather than the Braille
| Institute's website since they require an email and EULA, but
| here's the other download link anyway.
|
| https://www.brailleinstitute.org/freefont/
|
| Also, Nerd Fonts added Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono in their
| v3.4.0 release.
|
| https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/releases/tag/v3.4.0
|
| With Nerd Fonts, I'd recommend downloading both and setting
| up a fallback system through fontconfig though.
| Unfortunately, some versions (Nerd Fonts, official download)
| are still missing the backtick/grave glyph.
|
| https://github.com/googlefonts/atkinson-hyperlegible-next-
| mo...
| tracker1 wrote:
| I'm pretty much there with you. I tend to use Fira Code for
| the improved visibility, but really would prefer
| Consolas/Inconsolata, but there are a few character
| variations that I don't like as much and it's slightly harder
| to read (for me). I also have come to rely on the Nerd Fonts
| enhancements with my terminal prompt (Starship).
| alienbaby wrote:
| I was hoping to see some comparisons of blocks of English text,
| and blocks of program code text, rather than just character by
| character. That would help me understand how it feels to read
| in arbitrary blocks, as well as appreciate specific design
| characteristics.
| jasperry wrote:
| I agree. This is a very enlightening discussion of individual
| glyph features that affect readability. But the thing that
| hit me immediately is the difference in how expanded or
| condensed these fonts feel. Even though in the examples, the
| text width of JetBrains and Fira is identical, JetBrains
| "looks" condensed to the point of being harder to read. But I
| feel like Atkinson goes too far the other direction and is
| too expanded. When I read it, I feel like I'm tripping over
| the empty space between the characters, or I have to move my
| eyes too much to read one word.
| maybebyte wrote:
| This is good feedback, thank you. When I wrote the article, I
| erred on the side of too few comparison images rather than
| too many. What would you recommend for comparison blocks?
| "The five boxing wizards jump quickly" and maybe a fizzbuzz?
|
| For what it's worth, I generated the comparison images with
| Harfbuzz and ImageMagick, so in theory I could publish the
| script and then anyone could make their own comparison
| images. Fair warning: it's a quick and dirty shell script,
| written only to get the job done.
| wentin wrote:
| This might be of interest for you:
| https://www.codingfont.com/ I made it to select the perfect
| coding font. i will update it to include the Atkinson
| Hyperlegible Mono soon!
| maybebyte wrote:
| Hey, I'm a fan of your work. My font before this was Victor
| Mono, and I actually found it through your website. Do you
| publish the source code anywhere? I'd be interested to take
| a closer look at it.
| dijit wrote:
| I think this is it: https://github.com/wentin/coding-font
| wentin wrote:
| Ah, thanks for digging this out, this is the version 1,
| which I made using a no code tool. the current version is
| made using sveltekit, it is also just open sourced in the
| other comment.
| wentin wrote:
| The code was private but I see no reason not to open
| source it, so I just did!
| https://github.com/Typogram/coding-font-sveltekit This
| way you can add your own font to it, just modify
| codingfonts.ts and include the font files in the css!
| wentin wrote:
| If you feel like it, you can add this page
| https://www.codingfont.com/AtkinsonHyperlegibleMono to
| your article, it is the dedicated page for Atkinson
| Hyperlegible Mono with the options to compare it to other
| fonts on the side by side view.
| maybebyte wrote:
| I just added it under "Other Resources", thank you for
| the pointer. :)
| ta8645 wrote:
| Thanks, that is very helpful!
|
| This particular font seems to have very inconsistent
| kerning. The "isMultipleOf" identifier pushes the s & M &
| u and e & O way too tightly together, and the remaining
| letters seem inconsistently spaced as well.
| jherdman wrote:
| This was fun!
| evertheylen wrote:
| Why don't we embrace proportional (i.e. not monospace) fonts more
| for coding? IMHO, they are a big step up when it comes to
| legibility. I personally switched after I noticed reading stuff
| in the sidebar (which is usually in a proportional font) felt
| more comfortable than reading code.
|
| You can't use it for a terminal of course, and occasionally I
| find comments relying on monospace alignment. Other than that I
| see no downside to proportional fonts.
|
| I use Input, which gives more room to special characters and is
| pretty nice overall: https://input.djr.com/
| esafak wrote:
| Isn't it the opposite; use proportional fonts in the terminal
| but not code, where alignment matters? I am giving it a try,
| and I like it on first impression.
| fainpul wrote:
| Terminals usually don't support proportional fonts.
| Jaxan wrote:
| Alignment in the terminal matters. Even something like ls
| uses columns.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Tons and tons of terminal apps are written assuming a
| monospace font. Alignment matters and you don't have much
| control over that.
|
| In code, you can always choose a style that discourages
| spatial alignment.
| hollerith wrote:
| Which IDE or editor are you viewing this proportional font in?
|
| A proportional font in Emacs doesn't look right to my eye. My
| guess is that there are subtleties in the spacing between
| letters when a browser or a book publisher renders the text
| that Emacs does not know about.
| accelbred wrote:
| Emacs should also be doing kerning. I use proportional fonts
| for non-prog-mode buffers and no issue here.
| evertheylen wrote:
| Just VSCode, or more specifically, code-server
| (https://github.com/coder/code-server)
| maybebyte wrote:
| You know, I've heard this idea about proportional fonts before
| and have been intrigued by the idea. I use Neovim running
| inside Alacritty as my code editor, though, so unsure if it'll
| work for me or not.
|
| Going to check that font out - thank you for the suggestion. :)
| flobosg wrote:
| Check out the Acme editor from Plan 9:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor)#/media/File...
| fainpul wrote:
| I fully agree that proportional fonts are nicer to read, even
| for code. When I tried to use it, I got annoyed by Go, which
| autoformats code with spaces to align stuff and that looks very
| ugly with a proportional font. The solution would be elastic
| tabstops [1], but that seems just to be a concept without
| actual support in any editor.
|
| [1] https://nick-gravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/
| DASD wrote:
| You might also like monospace fonts with "smart kerning" as
| available with Commit Mono font. https://commitmono.com
| eviks wrote:
| Because unfortunately the tools are too primitive and don't
| support it
| antiframe wrote:
| Emacs has been around for decades and supports proportional
| typefaces everywhere I tried to use them. Are modern tools
| more primitive than that?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Well, the alignment is a pretty significant downside.
|
| There are now some excellent mono faces that have broken from a
| lot of the traditional monospace design elements and that look
| and feel very much like proportional fonts. Quadraat sans mono,
| cartograph cf, triplicate, I've seen a good homebrew alegreya
| sans mono variant too. I don't know of any free ones, though
| inconsolata-g is well in that direction. But I expect more of
| this trend over the next few years.
| bityard wrote:
| Some people use proportional fonts in their IDEs, and have been
| for decades. It's just not exactly a mainstream practice. (I
| seem to recall that Microsoft used proportional fonts in their
| IDEs in the 90's. Or maybe I'm thinking of Visual Basic? Not
| sure.)
|
| The main reason I have felt no inclination to use proportional
| fonts when coding is that proportional fonts tend to be _very_
| bad at distinguishing homoglyphs and that is the _last_ thing
| you want when trying to find the syntax error or undefined
| variable. Although I will admit that I haven't look very hard
| for a proportional font that's actually meant for programming.
|
| The other reason is that sometimes I read code where someone
| has created an ASCII diagram in the comments, or have other
| structures or whitespace where vertical alignment matters.
| (This used to be highly popular in C, although it's viewed as a
| bad practice in "modern" times.)
|
| I find monospace code very easy to read, so I guess at the end
| of the day, proportional fonts have a few disadvantages with no
| real upside. For me at least.
| CalChris wrote:
| > You can't use it for a terminal of course
|
| That is the problem, though. I edit with neovim inside of
| wezterm. The few times I've seen proportional used for code,
| I've thought that it looked interesting but realistically, I
| live in a vt100 universe and all things considered, it's really
| not that bad.
|
| I'm interested in Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono as a programming
| font. I think monospaced is a defining characteristic of
| programming fonts. Basically, legibility is just different for
| programming and text (although I clearly read too much
| Verdana).
| NoGravitas wrote:
| If you use a true proportional font, you give up aligning code
| elements other than basic indentation. For most people, that's
| too much to give up.
|
| I do like quasi-proportional fonts like Iosevka Aile, where
| very wide or very narrow characters are allowed something more
| like their natural widths. I think, though I'm not sure, that
| the widths are worked out so that "Wl" (wide + narrow) is the
| same length as "xx" (2 x normal), for example. My experience
| using Iosevka Aile in Emacs is that things usually-but-not-
| always align like they're supposed to, which is a better trade-
| off than fully proportional fonts.
| sureglymop wrote:
| Maybe this is a silly idea, but what about a terminal emulator
| that could switch fonts on the fly?
|
| For example, it could switch to a monospace font when a
| "fullscreen" program like vim switches to the other buffer.
|
| Or maybe it could even render different fonts per line.
| namibj wrote:
| You sound like you want Emacs. The X11 frontend.
| bonthron wrote:
| Maybe an acquired taste, but I'm fond of Intel One Mono ...
| https://github.com/intel/intel-one-mono
|
| designed for low-vision developers.
| ruuda wrote:
| I switched to it after more than 12 years with Consolas,
| expecting to quickly get bored of it, like every other time I
| had a brief affair with a different font. But One Mono stuck!
| bayindirh wrote:
| Looks like a great, functional font. I'm also a fan of Adobe
| Source Code Mono, but the look and feel of Berkeley Mono just
| wiped the floor of all these professional and well designed
| fonts.
|
| IBM's Plex Mono also a great contender for a "professional"
| programming font.
| pmarreck wrote:
| My current favorite code font is Berkeley Mono
| https://usgraphics.com/products/berkeley-mono
|
| It's not free, but I love it. You can customize some variations
| too (like how zeroes look; I use the "invisible slash" look) and
| it has some support for terminal symbols and programming
| ligatures used by terminal tweaks like Powerline, etc.
| Void_ wrote:
| I love this font! It's very well worth the price.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Yeah, where there's Berkeley Mono, there are no alternatives. I
| _love_ that font, and use it everywhere.
| braum wrote:
| yep! I just got it the other day. I upgraded to get the
| variants but I quickly settled on the Regular which is included
| with $75 Dev license. It's amazing even using it for non-code
| like in Obsidian.
| pmarreck wrote:
| It just occurred to me that if HN supported, say, 4-bit mono PNG
| images with transparency in comments, that would help here
| without impacting bandwidth too much and might add a classy
| element
| khaledh wrote:
| This is of course subjective, but I still find JetBrains Mono to
| be much more pleasant to read (when it comes to code) than any
| other mono font out there.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Yes, same for me. I tried many fonts over the years and I
| settled on Comic Code and JetBrains Mono. I use one for code
| editors and the other for CLIs.
| tommica wrote:
| I use comic code in my editors and in cli - it's just fun and
| very readable
| RyanHamilton wrote:
| I also found this and actually made it the default for an
| application I author with a few thousand users. Well it turned
| out jetbrains mono didn't support chinese characters so I broke
| my app for a proportion of my user base. I had to revert it.
| Also it can add seconds to load time. Just a warning as I think
| a few people on hn will make tools for others. I still set it
| as my own font.
| microflash wrote:
| You can always subset different fonts for different
| languages. This does two things: reduces the file size and
| allows some agents, such as your browser, load specific font
| depending on unicode range.
|
| I wrote a post about subsetting, in context of my personal
| site, here: https://www.naiyerasif.com/post/2024/06/27/how-i-
| subset-font...
| DrBazza wrote:
| I moved on from these fonts quite some time ago and just use
| https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka everywhere.
|
| It's ideal for 'wordy' languages such as C++ where a typical line
| length can often go over 150 characters, and then you don't have
| to scroll sideways.
| ThisNameIsTaken wrote:
| Adding to the list of 'this is what I am using', I have
| switched both terminal and code editor to Maple Mono[1]. Which,
| looking at TFA, seems to be somewhat similar in spirit as
| Atkinson Hyperlegible, although I haven't used that.
|
| Maple has many ligatures, I personally like the hypervisible
| [TODO]. Overall I find it very legible, even on small sizes,
| and pleasing also for writing e.g. in Markdown.
|
| [1] https://font.subf.dev/en/ /
| https://github.com/subframe7536/maple-font
| christophilus wrote:
| I don't like glyphs, but that normie mode looks excellent. I
| don't know how I missed maple when doing my font search
| recently. Thanks for the link.
| specialist wrote:
| Those are some sexy glyphs (gaps in curly punctuation).
|
| The ligatures for keywords is clever. I appreciate those
| niceties. Like rendering small gaps in large numbers, eg
| '1000000' looks like '1 000 000'.
|
| IIRC Berkeley or Monospaced have a few neat tricks like that.
| bitwize wrote:
| Iosevka is the most terminaly of the modern vector programming
| fonts, outside of perhaps Terminus. I set my Emacs to use it,
| as I haven't been able to find a font that comes anywhere near
| as comfortable.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| Website is down so I can't tell what it's actually about.
|
| But in any case, the correct font for coding is Cascadia Code. I
| don't know why more Linux people don't use it. Just because it's
| from Microsoft?
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code
| maybebyte wrote:
| The website is still up, it just loads slowly due to the
| increased viewership. Never had this much traffic before.
| spiralcoaster wrote:
| Alternative title: A long winded technical deep dive into how I
| make my personal font preference appear to be an objective
| decision.
| reidrac wrote:
| Also, how is not having support for font ligatures a feature?
| Can't you just not use them if they are available?
|
| May be worded differently, like: it doesn't support ligatures,
| but it doesn't affect me because I don't use them.
| sevg wrote:
| I've been loving MonoLisa. I previously used Fira Mono and then
| JetBrains Mono, each for a few years. All good fonts!
|
| https://www.monolisa.dev/
| esafak wrote:
| You can't beat that name!
| bityard wrote:
| I had a nice little chuckle when reading the intro paragraph:
|
| > As software developers, we always strive for better tools but
| rarely consider a font as such.
|
| We must travel in different circles, it feels to me like half
| the developers on HN, blogs, and social media are WAY more
| concerned with the aesthetic of their development environment
| than actually getting any real work done with it!
| AndriyKunitsyn wrote:
| "Mirror image glyphs occur when flipping one character creates
| another"
|
| About a half of the article is about these "mirror image glyphs".
| Why would they be a problem for the proclaimed purpose of
| character distinction? Has anyone ever mixed up "b" and "q"?
| maybebyte wrote:
| This is a fair question/critique. As I understand it, this is a
| particular consideration for coders and readers with dyslexia,
| as they flip the letters. The thought process is that by making
| the characters distinct, it reduces this problem.
|
| I learned about mirror glyphs through a document linked in the
| Accessible Perceptual Contrast Algorithm (APCA) website. For
| context, APCA is the system that aims to supplant current color
| calculation methods in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
| (WCAG).
|
| https://apcacontrast.com/
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338149302_Evaluatin...
| Jaxan wrote:
| Only when reading books to my children and we sit on the ground
| and the book is upside down for me :-). When programming, not
| once.
|
| The real reason it's important is that for some the glyphs are
| too much alike and can be confused. The brain may rotate of
| flips things sometimes.
| jkmcf wrote:
| Fira Code uses the empty set character ([?]) for zero. This
| mistake cost me a correct answer on a math test in 12th grade
| because I made the wrong slash.
|
| Either that, or I made the correct slash and my teacher
| interpreted it incorrectly!
| tripflag wrote:
| it's also inconvenient for Norwegians and Danes, since O is
| part of our alphabet. Slightly jealous of Sweden since they
| write it like O instead... Either way, big fan of dotted zeros
| for that reason.
| eviks wrote:
| Yeah, dot in the middle is the best option, also better aligns
| with the whole circular concept of the glyph as opposed to the
| straight slash line
| genshii wrote:
| I use Atkinson Hyperlegible for my blog[1]. Really happy to see
| the new version adds variable weight. That was the main thing I
| didn't like about the original version.
|
| [1] https://adamhl.dev
| queuebert wrote:
| Over my embarrassingly long time of coding, I've gone through all
| of these fonts and more (VT100 anyone?) and eventually traded the
| sans-serif fixed-width fonts for ones with serifs, as it feels
| less tiring at the end of long days. For the last few years, I've
| used Monaspace [1] variants, especially Xenon, and enjoyed them
| immensely.
|
| 1. https://monaspace.githubnext.com/
| wentin wrote:
| This font was just added to codingfont a few minutes ago!
| https://www.codingfont.com/AtkinsonHyperlegibleMono you can
| compare it side by side to your other favorite coding font to see
| which one is better looking in a code editor! You may also play
| the blindfold game to see if it will TRULY wins against all
| others in a blind test on codingfont.com
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I moved to "Atkinson Hyperlegible" for all of my Note-
| taking/Reading, Markdown Editing, etc. And recently upgraded to
| "Atkinson Hyperlegible Next" beating my choices of iA Writer's
| Fonts. We are spoiled for choice and they are all beautiful and
| super readable and comfortable.
|
| Unfortunately, I found "Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono"
| (IDE/Terminal) to be a tad stunted for my liking. I wear glasses
| but not that bad and I like to use my computer without glasses. I
| personally like "Monaco" with a tad larger font-size. The other
| reason I try to stick to more common fonts and pick one of the
| better of them is to be able to use any IDE (helping/discussing
| with team members) and not feeling uncomfortable without "my
| favorite font."
|
| Again, very personal, but I tried "Atkinson Hyperlegible" for the
| website for about a month or so and I found it to be neither
| modern, nor professional nor vintage/classic but more like the
| website warming up to the reader/visiter, "Hey, are you OK?
| Finding it hard to read, I'm going to make some scientific fixes
| to help you read!"
| amir734jj wrote:
| Me too. I can't use anything other than Monaco.
| bogeholm wrote:
| Nice!
|
| Available on Homebrew: https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/font-
| atkinson-hyperlegible#def...
| eigenvalue wrote:
| My favorite of these programmer fonts is PragmataPro, which I
| bought around 5 years ago. I like how it's denser while still
| being easy to read.
|
| Only problem is that it doesn't have all the nerd font glyphs so
| it can't handle the nice oh-my-zsh themes well, like the
| powerline-10k theme. I still use it despite that though.
| lycopodiopsida wrote:
| Same here, PragmataPro stopped me from switching fonts. Maybe
| because it was so expensive ;) It just has a lot of attention
| to detail and polish. I was using IBM Plex Mono and Iosevka
| before.
| Arubis wrote:
| Hard agree; I paid for the full desktop license and stopped
| thinking about my programming font choices.
| lcnmrn wrote:
| I wonder how it compares to Monolisa. https://www.monolisa.dev/
| elric wrote:
| > Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono lacks programming ligature support.
|
| Good. That's a feature, not a bug. I want -> to render as a dash
| and a greater than sign. Not an arrow. I can't even articulate
| why, other than a deep seated distrust of magic.
| CalChris wrote:
| wezterm gives you the option to ligature or not to ligature.
| config.harfbuzz_features = { 'calt=0', 'clig=0', 'liga=0' }
| eviks wrote:
| Nothing stops you from simply not enabling that font feature,
| user config is also not a bug
| elric wrote:
| Configurable fonts are a thing? Never configured a font
| beyond size/weight/colour. Intetesting.
| crazygringo wrote:
| How?
|
| Which editors on which OS's provide a toggle for that?
| dismalaf wrote:
| Dunno about toggle in an editor but fancy terminals have
| config flags for stuff like that (Kitty, Wezterm, Ghostty,
| etc...).
|
| And then you run Vim or Emacs in said terminal...
| hadrien01 wrote:
| Jetbrains IDEs: Settings > Editor > Font > Enable ligatures
|
| Sublime Text: Set "font_options" to "dlig". There are other
| settings to choose which character tables are allowed to
| use ligatures or not.
|
| Visual Studio Code: Set "editor.fontLigatures" to "true".
| You can also put CSS font features to choose which
| ligatures you want to enable.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Thank you so much, I had no idea! Very helpful.
| dismalaf wrote:
| This is why I like 0xProto font. It has ligatures for a nice
| clean look, but preserves a little bit of spacing between
| characters so they're still legible as individual characters.
| It's also very readable and legible overall, with nice
| proportions.
|
| And ligatures are a must for me because I find that symbols
| don't line up nicely in a ton of fonts and it annoys me a lot.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| The difficulty I have with many so-called _legible_ fonts is that
| they're often not very _readable_.
|
| Legibility refers to how easily individual characters can be
| identified. But good readability depends on how easily your brain
| can recognize whole words--through pattern recognition of word
| shapes.
|
| When characters are too similar in shape and size, it becomes
| harder to distinguish the unique shape of each word, which
| reduces readability (which often happens with these highly
| legible fonts) -- even if each individual letter is technically
| more clear.
| maybebyte wrote:
| Interesting distinction there. I didn't know that was the
| difference between legibility and readability. I'd really like
| to hear more about this. Do you have experience with fonts that
| strike a better balance, or know of reading material that
| discusses this subject in more detail?
| tiffanyh wrote:
| This is a complex topic.
|
| For example, if you grew up in an English-speaking country,
| your computer likely defaulted to Arial or Helvetica as its
| sans-serif font. Over time, your brain became familiar with
| how words looked in those typefaces--their proportions and
| shapes.
|
| Because fonts like Inter and SF share similar proportions,
| your brain finds them easier to process, which makes them
| feel more readable.
| atoav wrote:
| Good observation, legibilty is not the same as readability.
| Hyperlegible fonts are used in places where it is crucial that
| the readers can identify the correct characters and/or short
| words - even if the readability suffers slightly.
|
| Readable fonts are for longer form texts where the flow of
| reading is more important than correctly identfying individual
| characters.
|
| Both have valid use cases and there are fonts who mange to do
| both pretty well.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| This legibility vs readability distinction is why variable-
| width programming fonts like Proportional or Input Sans can
| actually reduce cognitive load during extended coding sessions
| despite sacrificing character grid alignment.
| soneca wrote:
| Do you think Atkinson Hyperlegible specifically hurts
| readability?
|
| I am thinking about the regular one on text, not mono on code.
| LexiMax wrote:
| Since we're sharing our monospace fonts of choice, I use
| mononoki. My vision isn't great, and this is the font I've found
| that allows me to pack the most on my screen while still
| remaining readable.
|
| https://github.com/madmalik/mononoki
|
| That said, the differences between 0 and 8, while better than my
| previous favorites, still aren't as stark as I'd like them to be.
| mcswell wrote:
| Sans serifs...except when the serifs help distinguish 1 from l
| and from I, etc.
|
| Why not use a monospaced serif font in the first place? I get
| that they don't seem to be common, but maybe they should be.
| kqr wrote:
| I agree. I'm a big fan of Luxi Mono, but I avoid it when
| publishing stuff because others seem to dislike serifs.
| WCSTombs wrote:
| Luxi Mono is great. Do you have an opinion on Go Mono [1]?
| It's by the same creators as the Luxi fonts (Bigelow &
| Holmes) and very similar to Luxi Mono but fixes some
| legibility issues. Moreover, it's freely licensed.
|
| [1] https://go.dev/blog/go-fonts
| WCSTombs wrote:
| I think it's because traditionally computer screens have pretty
| low DPI, and serifs can be really tricky to render well at low
| DPI. In print, that's not an issue, and serif fonts really
| shine.
|
| On high-DPI screens, like the one I'm currently using, serif
| monospace fonts can also look really good. For example, I'm
| typing in Latin Modern Mono (based on TeX's default typewriter
| font) in this text box.
| alexeiz wrote:
| Coming from Commit Mono, Atkinson looks a bit unusual. But I
| think I can get used to it. I think the comparison to Fira Code
| is valid, because in the terminal Atkinson looks almost like Fira
| Mono, but better. Since I usually sit a meter away from the
| screen, I can appreciate the extra legibility of this font.
|
| Also, it's great that it's available as a Nerd variant. It makes
| it super easy to install on Linux with Embellish.
| bronlund wrote:
| To me it seems that Atkinson Hyperlegible Mono has really bad
| kerning. I think I'll stick to JetBrains Mono for the time being.
| bityard wrote:
| For those who just want to have one nice reliable monospace font
| and move onto other concerns in life, there is Hack:
| https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/
| zettabomb wrote:
| Somehow this just seems like throwing a fourth choice into the
| mix, rather than simplifying anything.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| It seems I'm the only person who likes fonts that deliberately
| exaggerate their edges to better align with a pixel grid. All of
| these font comparisons always compare pretty smooth and round
| fonts to each other. Apart from minor details, the comparisons
| look the same. But I actually like this design most:
| https://hajo.me/images/HajoCode16px_hr.png On a 9x16 pixel grid,
| that'll have really sharp contrasts, just like good old Windows
| 98 before subpixel antialiasing.
| KTibow wrote:
| Thing is Atkinson Hyperlegible is "what if we made a non-
| monospace font with monospace like, distinct characters?" so the
| Mono version doesn't have much of a point. For text or code, it
| looks worse to me than the alternatives.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| What I have found with these fonts (and I have tried them all) is
| that one isn't really much better than an another, but instead I
| have to switch between them (and others) because eventually I get
| sick of every single one of them.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > because eventually I get sick of every single one of them.
|
| Can I ask why?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I don't know. I like all the fonts, they're good. But looking
| at them for long periods of time makes me tired of looking at
| them and I just need to switch. You might as well ask me why
| I get tired of a certain food if I eat it too often.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Oh, OK. I asked, because sometimes people doesn't like a
| certain aspect of a font and can't stand it, and need to
| switch. Also, I'm also the exact opposite of you. I can use
| a font I like for a decade without getting tired of it.
| Same for a good color scheme for my terminals / IDE.
|
| So it was a genuine curiosity of me. Sorry if it sounded
| rude or accusatory or similar.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Oh no, I didn't consider it rude at all! It's quite
| interesting to find someone who can use the same one over
| and over....brains are weird eh?
| paradox460 wrote:
| Would love to see iosevka join this comparison
| asadotzler wrote:
| Fira fonts, another Mozilla contribution to the world. We had
| these designed for Firefox OS (in concert with Telefonica.) Nice
| to see some of that effort endures, even if only in type.
| arh68 wrote:
| Well, now I'm confused.
|
| > _Fira Code uses uniform length for +, =, and -. - and _ share
| similar length. The /\ characters join together and render
| smaller compared to the other fonts._
|
| This "joining" is a ligatures thing, I'm almost certain, at least
| for `<>`. I can't for the life of me get anything on macOS to
| render `/\\` as joined, though. Stumped. I've no preference
| either way, it's just weird to see a familiar font rendered so
| strangely. Maybe it's a Windows font rendering thing ?
|
| A very fair comparison, though I'd argue legibility isn't always
| worthwhile; the MICR (?) fonts on checks are quite legible
| (perhaps machine-legible) but too weird to use.
|
| also, TIL IntelliJ bundles Fira Code for quite some time now
| maybebyte wrote:
| Interesting to see the font rendering differences crop up, I
| haven't tested on anything except Linux. For context, I wrote a
| hacky shell script that uses Harfbuzz and ImageMagick to
| generate the comparison images in a Fedora 41 virtual machine.
| It's possible that something in that software stack causes the
| characters to render differently.
| outlore wrote:
| any iosevka lovers out there? keep coming back to it even after
| trying Atkinson, Berkeley Mono, Jetbrains Mono...
| c-hendricks wrote:
| Heads up all the images are squished on mobile.
| earksiinni wrote:
| You can pry PragmataPro from my cold dead hands.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-22 23:00 UTC)