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I've tried most of these at some point over the past few years and eventually settled on JetBrains Mono. I love it. The story about how it was created is pretty

I've tried most of these at some point over the past few years and eventually settled on JetBrains Mono. I love it. The story about how it was created is pretty interesting... https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/ https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/ And yes, there's a powerline version. (Not affiliated with JetBrains in any way)

unclekev 6y ago
I've never seen a font's design explained so well. There's so many subliminal things that I had never thought about/considered.
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  But be careful: not everyone will agree with what they say in such claims. I myself disagree at least moderately with more than half of what they say: Increased letter height for better reading experience: this makes the proportions of the letters a little awkward, and makes ascenders, descenders and capitals less distinct. There’s a reason why the height of x should be quite a bit less than the height of d or M. They say “see how much nicer than Consolas this is!” yet I strongly prefer Consolas there. Code-specific eye movement: again, increasing homogeneity regularly actually decreases reading performance. You do want patterns to be clear, yes, but trying to make everything closer to rectangular may well be taking things too far. Functional сonstruction: who told you tails on letters like u were “unnecessary details”? The r and g ones are more subjective (Fira Code’s r especially is perhaps unnecessarily complex), but them tails be there for a reason, as they help with orientation of the letters and pattern recognition. Note that the g retained the taily thing at the top right corner. Distinctiveness of symbols: I certainly have no complaints here—unless it be that the top left taily thing is inconsistent with the rest of the font, as with the letter i; but doing i and l in this way is quite common in monospaces. Cut strokes: there’s truth to the pixel grid alignment technique, so long as the size is right or hinting is employed (… which it probably isn’t, nowadays). Tech personality, yeah, that’s probably true. Italic: seems legit. Ligatures for code: “To reduce noise”? This is an extremely contentious claim that I happen to believe is drivel (largely because your fingers still have to think in terms of the actual characters when you were typing, so even if you’ve reduced one cognitive load—debatable—you’ve certainly introduced another). “To balance whitespace”: fairly subjective, I think; in a proportional font, you do this sort of thing via kerning, where it works easily and naturally; but I don’t much like using ligatures to achieve the effect in a monospace.
  - frereubu 6y ago
    This comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22054487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22054487 - made similar points when the font was released, and I'm in complete agreement. Those decisions feel much more like aesthetic decisions rather than functional / accessible ones.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Any font that doesn't consider these things is generally not one worth using, to be honest. They are quite literally the bar for consideration.
- shagie 6y ago
  While not as in depth... the Source Code Pro announcement page touched on some of those - http://blog.typekit.com/2012/09/24/source-code-pro/ http://blog.typekit.com/2012/09/24/source-code-pro/
sigzero 6y ago
They have non-ligature versions as well which is nice of them to do. It's a good looking font.

unclekev 6y ago

I've never seen a font's design explained so well. There's so many subliminal things that I had never thought about/considered.

chrismorgan 6y ago
But be careful: not everyone will agree with what they say in such claims. I myself disagree at least moderately with more than half of what they say: Increased letter height for better reading experience: this makes the proportions of the letters a little awkward, and makes ascenders, descenders and capitals less distinct. There’s a reason why the height of x should be quite a bit less than the height of d or M. They say “see how much nicer than Consolas this is!” yet I strongly prefer Consolas there. Code-specific eye movement: again, increasing homogeneity regularly actually decreases reading performance. You do want patterns to be clear, yes, but trying to make everything closer to rectangular may well be taking things too far. Functional сonstruction: who told you tails on letters like u were “unnecessary details”? The r and g ones are more subjective (Fira Code’s r especially is perhaps unnecessarily complex), but them tails be there for a reason, as they help with orientation of the letters and pattern recognition. Note that the g retained the taily thing at the top right corner. Distinctiveness of symbols: I certainly have no complaints here—unless it be that the top left taily thing is inconsistent with the rest of the font, as with the letter i; but doing i and l in this way is quite common in monospaces. Cut strokes: there’s truth to the pixel grid alignment technique, so long as the size is right or hinting is employed (… which it probably isn’t, nowadays). Tech personality, yeah, that’s probably true. Italic: seems legit. Ligatures for code: “To reduce noise”? This is an extremely contentious claim that I happen to believe is drivel (largely because your fingers still have to think in terms of the actual characters when you were typing, so even if you’ve reduced one cognitive load—debatable—you’ve certainly introduced another). “To balance whitespace”: fairly subjective, I think; in a proportional font, you do this sort of thing via kerning, where it works easily and naturally; but I don’t much like using ligatures to achieve the effect in a monospace.
- frereubu 6y ago
  This comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22054487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22054487 - made similar points when the font was released, and I'm in complete agreement. Those decisions feel much more like aesthetic decisions rather than functional / accessible ones.
saagarjha 6y ago
Any font that doesn't consider these things is generally not one worth using, to be honest. They are quite literally the bar for consideration.
shagie 6y ago
While not as in depth... the Source Code Pro announcement page touched on some of those - http://blog.typekit.com/2012/09/24/source-code-pro/ http://blog.typekit.com/2012/09/24/source-code-pro/

sigzero 6y ago

They have non-ligature versions as well which is nice of them to do. It's a good looking font.