24 ms·

MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

402 points by qubitcoder 5y ago

paulcole 5y ago
> being constrained by the same width of all glyphs can result in a boring or unreadable font. I don't see how "boring" is an issue here. If the whole thing has a goal of functionality, why do I care if it's boring? And what is a "boring" font anyway? Reminds me of the Apple-induced desire to call everything "stunning" or "beautiful."
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > I don't see how "boring" is an issue here. If the whole thing has a goal of functionality, why do I care if it's boring? Exactly. Or actually, to go even further: On the contrary, "boring" may well be an issue, but in the sense that that's what we want. When you write code -- or prose, marketing copy, poetry, whatever -- what you want to concentrate on is the content of your text, not the esthetic of the letterforms. "Boring" is the opposite of "captures your attention", and if I want to focus my attention on the meaning of groups of letters, "boring" -- not grabbing my attention -- is exactly what I want the shapes of the letters themselves to be. And yes, I want them all to be the same width, so I can line up repetitive bits of code (or poetry?) below each other and match -- catch -- the non-repetitive bits at a glance. (Sorry, we can't all write in bone-DRY functional languages; SQL is pretty damn verbose and often, yes, repetitive.) IMO that's part of the content I want to focus on.
bitwize 5y ago
Another day, another Letter Gothic lookalike "developer font". I do not feel particularly motivated to switch away from the terminal bitmap fonts I normally use. There's something about an 8x8, 8x16, or similar small numbers grid of pixels -- the constraints seemed to breed creativity that you don't see too much of anymore in monospaced fonts for coding/terminal use.
- enricozb 5y ago
  Curious which bitmap font you use? I use terminus.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Terminus is a great one, but right now I'm partial to the Atari ST 8x16 font.
roughly 5y ago
> As software developers, we always strive for better tools but rarely consider font as such. … where have YOU been spending time?
stormking 5y ago
I don't understand how they can advertise this font being "wider" than other ones. I skipped all those modern Programming Fonts because none of them is as condensed and readable as "TheSans Mono Condensed". That font is terrible because its basically still ASCII only, but I use it everywhere. I would pay good money for a Unicode version.
kevwil 5y ago
- While the effort to create fonts is not trivial and should be rewarded, this seems expensive. I've bought fonts before, but they were like $5-15, not $100. - It's fantastic to see the variety of human experience on display in the wide variety of font preferences. I used to thing "why to we need more than one?" LOL - My favorite so far is Source Code Pro.
zestyping 5y ago
Please stop it with the "coding ligatures" already. They are not helpful and only serve to obscure the code being written. This has got to be one of my least favourite trends in programming aesthetics these days. For a font claiming to "follow function" to devote so much effort to sacrificing function for the _vogue du jour_ is especially rich.
- taeric 5y ago
  I mean... The existence of ligatures is almost by definition strictly aesthetic. And on that measure, it either brings you a smile to notice that f and i, for example, are joined; or you didn't even notice it. That is, I won't claim they help readability. But they do make me smile, and don't seem to hurt. (I'm assuming they disappear on copy operations. Mac OS' habit of replacing -- with a longer dash is painful when sending cli arguments.)
  - dsr_ 5y ago
    There's a third option: "What is that?" When I'm reading fiction, I generally don't mind ligatures. I find them oppressively obscurantist in any situation where I want to know clearly and distinctly what each character is -- i.e. code and science/math/engineering.
    - taeric 5y ago
      I'd wager that the vast majority of the time, you just don't notice them. About the only time they are easily visible is in large type, when they really shouldn't be used. It's kind of like right justified text. Done well, it shouldn't be noticed how it was done.
      - dsr_ 5y ago
        Please don't tell me what I do and don't see when I just told you what I see and how I feel about it.
        5y ago
izietto 5y ago
I can't really move away from: - Dejavu Sans Mono on the editor - Ubuntu Mono on the terminal Maybe it's just that Ubuntu renders such fonts beautifully, but any other font (except maybe Roboto) is an eyesore, to me
solarmist 5y ago
Are there plans to support Arabic, Japanese, Korean or other missing languages? I do a lot of NLP work in various languages.
- maccolgan 5y ago
  Is Monospace Arabic a real thing?
  - solarmist 5y ago
    To the best of my knowledge. I would expect programmers to need it the same as in any other language. https://makkuk.com/kawkab-mono/ https://makkuk.com/kawkab-mono/
- okonet 5y ago
  We might consider doing that if we see a big demand but currently the economics of adding those languages doesn’t add up for us.
yohgen 5y ago
The site lists increased width of the font as a feature - but after discovering PragmataPro and Iosevka (that is usually mentioned as an open source alternative) I fell in love with how much horizontal space can be saved with those fonts. I often find myself opening two shells/IDEs side by side, and at these moments I truly appreciate how little space they occupy. From my perspective, it's a no for MonoLisa.
adultSwim 5y ago
I'm thinking about getting this. I really liked the side by side demo. Paying for my tools is worth it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mortenjorck 5y ago
What I like most about this font is that it has a completely different aesthetic from my favorite monospace, JetBrains mono. It has more of the humanist flavor of a Frutiger versus the DIN-like rationalism most monospace fonts adopt.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
josefrichter 5y ago
I am one of those using this font for ~1 year now, very happy with it. As a designer/developer with penchant for typography I am the perfect target customer I guess.
zppln 5y ago
I thought this was gonna be yet another monospace font I wouldn't be able to tell from all the others, but fuck me as soon as the page loaded this one just spoke to me. Grabbing this for sure, well done!
dokka 5y ago
very cool! it passes the 1IilL0Oo test. I'll give it a try.
jonpalmisc 5y ago
On the topic of fonts: If your font of choice has it, try using the medium weight as the "normal" weight in your editor — I've found I prefer it to the regular weight with most fonts. I started doing this after noticing that the default Xcode font is SF Mono Medium.
- rdrey 5y ago
  I thought I was the only one doing this :P It definitely helps at smaller sizes, narrow fonts like MonoLisa simply become too faint to read easily otherwise
- CharlesW 5y ago
  For anyone else who wasn't sure which is bolder, Normal/Regular is considered weight 400 in CSS while Medium is 500.
vinkelhake 5y ago
If you're willing to spend money on a font for coding, then do yourself a favor and take a look at PragmataPro as well. I bought a license (checks notes...) 8 years ago and it has served me very well. If I was not down to pay for a font, then I'd probably use one of Iosevka's forms. Personally, however, it became clear to me that just like my monitor, the font I spend hours looking at every day is also worth some money. https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/ https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/
- makepanic 5y ago
  There's also Iosevka[1] which is open source[2] and also similar to Pragmata. It even has a Pragmata Pro Style. [1] - https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ [2] - https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka
  - swah 5y ago
    Yeah - I paid for Pragmata back in the day and totally forgot about it when Iosevka appeared. Even reminds me a little bit of 6x13 which I used for so long with my Dell 22"...
- huhtenberg 5y ago
  Pragmata Pro is quite nice... but not for coding. I like narrow fonts. Barlow is excellent. News Gothic is fantastic. Geo Grotesque is super beautiful. But it just doesn't work for me when a coding font is narrow. Fonts like Iosevka and Pragmata are harder to read than needed and for no clear benefit. Especially when used for projects based on C and derivatives. If you ever find yourself needing to cram more symbols per line onto your screen, it's a sign that there's a coding style problem! Lines simply should be short enough to not require horizontal compression. Obviously, YMMV, to each their own, etc.
  - lobstrosity420 5y ago
    I keep my code below the 80 column mark, as is common. For me, the reason I like the more narrow Iosevka is because it lets me have more split buffers open on the same monitor. With Iosevka I can have 3 splits with a little over 80 columns each, other fonts only let me have two. I never noticed a decrease in readability but I've been using Iosevka for a very long time now, perhaps it's time to try out a wider font and see if it's worth it.
flobosg 5y ago
The whitespace only ligatures look like an interesting idea and a good alternative to full ones.
- diputsmonro 5y ago
  I feel like I'm the only person who hates ligatures in coding fonts, but I agree that these whitespace ligatures are (mostly) a good compromise.
lanewinfield 5y ago
I'm a big fan of Input Sans as well: https://djr.com/input/ https://djr.com/input/
mikojan 5y ago
Not a fan of these sharp modern faces in general. However, the small text in this one looks particularly "smudgy". I stopped hopping monospace fonts when I discovered Go Mono. Go Mono does not seem to get blurry even at small sizes. M, m, n always look impeccable. Not so here. I'm not sure. Maybe something is wrong with the text-rendering in my browser.
- shadowofneptune 5y ago
  I very much like Go Mono, despite it being something of an oddball. https://www.programmingfonts.org/#go-mono https://www.programmingfonts.org/#go-mono A serif monospace font that doesn't look it came from a typewriter? Very little separation between letters? A font made for specifically for typesetting one programming language? It really doesn't seem like it should work, but it does for me. I have it installed as the system monospace font on every computer I can.
xgme 5y ago
Isn't "increased width" an ungodly sin to the developer lord? If anything, we want to see more in a given space, not less...
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  For terminal/console use wide fonts hurt IMHO. I really like Iosevka, it even has a terminal optimized version that's explicitly less wide: https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ https://typeof.net/Iosevka/
- fictorial 5y ago
  Stay away from Vulf Mono then!
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Isn't "increased width" an ungodly sin to the developer lord? If anything we want to see more in a given space, not less... I think it increases readability. I need to read what I'm looking at, not a lot of things I'm not looking at.
  - xgme 5y ago
    Not if a part of a line is out of the window right? This makes splitting harder, therefore, reading harder
    - sidpatil 5y ago
      Why not just use word wrapping?
      - xgme 5y ago
        I'm already going with 80 or 120 chars per line. Why would I word wrap well written code? Also word wrappings will lose all the preceding tabs. It makes it 100x harder to read. The issue is I will have less split space.
speedgoose 5y ago
Since we are talking about our favourite coding fonts, my personal choice is on Comic Code. I find it very easy to read and better than the other mono comic sans fonts. https://tosche.net/fonts/comic-code https://tosche.net/fonts/comic-code
- kbd 5y ago
  Highly recommend Fantasque Sans Mono for a realistic take on the "comic-style" coding font - https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans
  - epolanski 5y ago
    It's weird but it feels extremely..welcoming and non-intimidating. I'm gonna give it a spin tomorrow even though I love jetbrains mono.
  - tmalsburg2 5y ago
    Seconded. It’s pleasantly playful but not so much as to distract. Very happy with it.
- agrippanux 5y ago
  Cascadia Code (free, from Microsoft) is surprisingly good. There is a clone of it on NerdFonts that adds more ligatures if that’s your jam.
  - thayne 5y ago
    Maybe a bit pedantic, but nerdfont adds icons, not ligatures.
- sebastianconcpt 5y ago
  Oh god... I can't say if you're trolling or not.
  - StevePerkins 5y ago
pianoben 5y ago
The first font with a pre-existing theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMH96B8QWcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMH96B8QWcc
maupin 5y ago
Looks good, but I'm still in love with Consolas.
- bjornsteffanson 5y ago
  Same. You might find Inconsolata interesting, too: https://github.com/googlefonts/Inconsolata https://github.com/googlefonts/Inconsolata
kbd 5y ago
Unfortunately not available to compare on https://www.programmingfonts.org/ https://www.programmingfonts.org/ While I'm here: Victor Mono has been my programming font of choice for a while now: https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/ https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/ Oh, look at that, the Victor Mono homepage has a font comparison slider that allows you to compare it to MonoLisa! MonoLisa advertises that it's wider than other monospace fonts, and you can really see that in the comparison. One of the things I appreciate about Victor Mono is that it is narrower than many other monospace fonts (while still being very readable), allowing you to fit more code side-by-side.
- kevwil 5y ago
  Thanks. A bit narrow for my tastes but I'm impressed by the semi-cursive italic idea. Clever. Giving it a try right now!
- cormullion 5y ago
  Another site for comparing fonts is the excellent https://devfonts.gafi.dev/ https://devfonts.gafi.dev/. This also doesn't have MonoLisa, though.
- shp0ngle 5y ago
  Just add it there! It's on github https://github.com/braver/programmingfonts https://github.com/braver/programmingfonts edit: ahhh it's a paid font. so nope
- hunterb123 5y ago
  Thanks for the resource, that's a cool site!
- Ezku 5y ago
  Oh, this was a new one for me. In case you like narrow but Victor’s not your thing, I can enthusiastically point you towards Iosevka. (That’s also available in Victor’s comparison picker. Nice!)
  - daliusd 5y ago
azeirah 5y ago
My favorite font still remains fantasque sans mono. It's loosely based on comic sans, I just need a little playful edge in my coding job. Otherwise it gets too stale. Love the font
- triaste 5y ago
  I Completely agree! It is my daily driver font. Use it everywhere, great for shells too. And it's free https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans
ashton314 5y ago
> As software developers, we always strive for better tools but rarely consider font as such. Meanwhile, I look at new coding fonts on at least a monthly basis. Nothing beats Input Mono [^1] for me; I actually like wider fonts, so I might take this one out for a spin. [^1]: https://input.djr.com/ https://input.djr.com/
cercatrova 5y ago
Do people really care that much about editor fonts? I just use SF Mono and call it a day. I've never had a problem where the font, of all things, was the main cause of something not working for me.
- imglorp 5y ago
  No, sorry fontographers, but I can't tell the difference between the scores of mono fonts created in the last half dozen years. As long as it's kinda pleasing and can easily see the differences between () and {}, 1iIlL| and oO0, I'm all set.
- the_mitsuhiko 5y ago
  If you're looking your day at nothing else but text it's the most obvious thing to spend time and money on to improve. Sure, it's an utilitarian thing at the end of the day, but why should it not look pleasant to your eyes? I don't think I ever had _a problem_ with a font, but that does not mean I do not want to spend a bit of time and effort to improve my experience. I could probably also get away with a much worse keyboard or monitor and be just as productive. But would I enjoy it just as much? Probably not.
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    Idk, putting the $199 towards buying a nicer monitor seems like the pro gamer move. There are billions of free fonts out there.
    - the_mitsuhiko 5y ago
      I'm not sure what you're referring to. The font is a one time purchase and significantly cheaper than a new monitor. Both things (a better monitor and a better font) can make you enjoy the things you're doing more. Yes, there might be billions of free fonts out there, but the cost of that font is also not exactly making a huge impact for me that I have to save money there. Why would I start saving with the font all the sudden when I spend more money on literally everything else? Does not really compute to me.
StevePerkins 5y ago
I wonder how many people glancing at the landing page have browsed over to the download page, and discovered that this a paid font? To the tune of $69 to $239, depending on the options you want. If this were something really revolutionary, then okay. But this looks like every other Bitstream Vera Sans Mono variant, just tweaked to be a touch wider than Fira Code or Jetbrains Mono. But half of the fonts on https://www.programmingfonts.org https://www.programmingfonts.org are Bitstream Vera Sans Mono variants, a touch wider than Fira Code or Jetbrains Mono. And they're all open source and free.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  People charging $199 for a slightly wider Lucida Console, you can't make this shit up. The marketing is so outrageous. In case someone's seriously considering this, here are an additional two sites that have literally hundreds of CC0 and other free to use fonts, not just monospace: https://www.1001freefonts.com https://www.1001freefonts.com http://allfont.net http://allfont.net DIN 1451 Mittelschrift is my personal favorite.
  - drewzero1 5y ago
    I love the DIN family but haven't been able to find a monospaced variant for coding/terminal use. I'd add Abstract Fonts[1] to the list, though you have to watch the license (many are only free for personal/non-commercial use). [1] https://www.abstractfonts.com/ https://www.abstractfonts.com/
  - thor_molecules 5y ago
    If you like symbols and fancy terminal stuff, I'd also like to recommend any of the Nerd Fonts - all free. https://www.nerdfonts.com/ https://www.nerdfonts.com/
    - john_alan 5y ago
      Superb. Love this font.
  - 5y ago
dawei67 5y ago
looks very bad on non-retina windows display jetbrains mono is still the best
- okonet 5y ago
  We are aware of some windows related issues on non-hidpi displays. It’s the price to pay for less geometric shape of glyphs unfortunately.
GuB-42 5y ago
I am the only one who finds fonts a bit expensive for personal use? It is not a rant, I am not saying it isn't worth it, that font designers can't make money, etc... But that puts it on the same level as tools like Sublime Text or Beyond Compare. For me, it is enough of a turn off not to use a commercial font, especially considering that the free offering is quite good. I totally understand the higher price for commercial use, here, it is cheap compared to the costs of hiring a designer, and it may have a real impact on your sales and ultimately earn you money. But why is the price for personal use around $60? Is it some kind of a sweet spot because most people won't buy fonts anyways, even for $1, but those who do expect to pay that kind of money. Does it account for piracy, which I guess is easy and goes unnoticed if you only use it personally?
- sytelus 5y ago
  Selling font direct to consumers is extremely bad business model. This doesn’t work. People are not keen on shelling out 100s of dollars when IDEs already come with decent fonts and other thousands of free fonts readily available. This font looks great but most people would argue about marginal benefit. I would hope they would partner with IDE makers and big tech and give them license to use it for their expected revenue instead.
  - sytelus 5y ago
    I also think creators of this font likely have not performed any market testing or studied price-revenue curves. I might take a bet that $5 flat price would produce higher revenues. Another option for them is to bundle many such fonts by forming group with other creators together. That has higher chance of selling a professional fonts as package to IDE makers and big tech.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    Sorry, but no IDE comes with a proper 3278-like font. Not even IBM's Developer for z/OS comes with one (they commissioned that other font called Plex... who would take seriously a font named after a media player?). Luckily, everyone can get one at https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font. Note: shameless plug ;-)
andrewl-hn 5y ago
I looked at it a few years ago and dismissed it because it’s so similar to Source Code Pro in terms of spacing, size and overall feel. Source Code Pro is an excellent wide font that I’ve been using since its release about a decade ago. And it’s free, and there are Nerd Font variants with ligatures if you’re into that. I noticed that MonaLisa added script variant last year, so if you want something like that in your editor it’s a very good choice. In fact, I’d recommend it over Operator Mono (the OG monospaced font with scripted italics), because the later has a much smaller character set. Or, pick a free Victor Mono if you like narrower symbols. Alas, us - wide font users - have to pay for a script italics :)
rubyist5eva 5y ago
this is too expensive, I would pay $40
divbzero 5y ago
Is this part about terminals actually true? Or a tad exaggerated for marketing? > MonoLisa uses open forms and terminals (starting and ending points) that are pointing towards the neighboring letters to let the eye follow the line of text fluently. Regardless, I like the font overall. My go-to is Fira Code but this might be worth a try.
- deathanatos 5y ago
  I'm still not getting how the top of the a isn't pointing to the left, completely opposite the arrow they've drawn on it. (Or, also, that anything like what the site describes actually happens. The entire page is [citation needed].)
andjd 5y ago
I'm going to hop on my hobby horse again for a second: One of their first points is this: >Designing a monospace font is much harder than a traditional, proportional one: being constrained by the same width of all glyphs can result in a boring or unreadable font. And they're absolutely right. But it begs the first-principals question-- why code using a monospace font? Today, every major editor that isn't terminal-based supports proportional width fonts beautifully. It's also incredibly rare to see modern style guides that depend on having consistent column widths. In 2022, there's no technical reason to code using monospaced fonts. And there are a ton of beautiful and readable fonts out there -- There are probably a dozen pre-installed on your system that are more beautiful and readable than this font. You see this tag line time-and-time again. "A font designed by and for software developers." But font design is and art and a discipline. Doing it well is very hard.
- toomanydoubts 5y ago
  I had never considered using variable width fonts for programming. I can see some minor issues, like vim users(on an environment that support variable-width fonts) now have no consistency on where their cursor will land when using j/k to move up and down lines, but I think I will still try it out.
- thiht 5y ago
  > why code using a monospace font? Because unlike prose, we don’t reason about code in terms of words, sentences or paragraphs but rather in terms of statements, lines and blocks. Navigating between visual lines vertically makes sense when navigating in code. And to optimize this kind of navigation, monospace fonts are the best choice because where your cursor lands is predictible. It also brings cool features such as block selection which you can’t implement properly with proportional fonts.
  - Stratoscope 5y ago
    I don't quite understand this. I've used proportional fonts in PyCharm and other editors for many years, and vertical navigation and block selection work fine.
  - 5y ago
lifeplusplus 5y ago
I will never use a font like this wider? hieroglyphs?? LOL no
bussierem 5y ago
The comparison to Fira Code is hilarious, basically no deviation except 'r'. Just go use Fira Code it's at least free
michaklang 5y ago
Holy macaroni! Looks awesome!
jay_kyburz 5y ago
There is a font on my KDE desktop called just "Monospace" and its a great font. I can't find a font file called Monospace. Does anybody know what the font is? I would love to have it on my windows machine.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  I'm guessing this is just whatever the default monospace font is rather than being a font called Monospace.
- gatonegro 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure the default "monospace" font in KDE is mapped to Hack: https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/ https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/
- anuragsoni 5y ago
  Different distributions pick different defaults for `Monospace`. If you are using KDE on ubuntu, `Monospace` might be pointing to `Ubuntu Mono`. On other linux distros if they are sticking to KDE defaults, then Monospace will point to Hack [1] [1] https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/ https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/
  - jay_kyburz 5y ago
    I'm on Kubuntu, Its not Ubunto Mono and I'm 99% sure its not Hack. You can select both those options and both look quite different. I wish I was at home so I could post a screenshot.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  I think you should be able to run `fc-match monospace` to find what it is resolving it to.
  - jay_kyburz 5y ago
    Thanks very much! It is NotoSansMono-Regular.ttf
dsmmcken 5y ago
The theme switcher (coloured dots, top right) switching between a variety of common editor themes is a nice touch.
sergiotapia 5y ago
I never even considered people bought fonts for local dev use. Sounds pretty steep.
timfi 5y ago
This may seem like a minor nitpick but it's something that popped out at me: italisizing a font shouldn't add or remove serifs. There is a reason why Unicode defines both sans- and serif versions of italics.
shmerl 5y ago
It tired a bunch of different fonts, but nothing felt as good as Dejavu Sans Mono.
jupp0r 5y ago
If I was going to pay for it, I wish they'd offer nerdfont patched versions of their font (see https://www.nerdfonts.com/ https://www.nerdfonts.com/).
- okonet 5y ago
  We are looking into this and might provide a solution soon.
bostonsre 5y ago
> MonoLisa uses open forms and terminals (starting and ending points) that are pointing towards the neighboring letters to let the eye follow the line of text fluently. Does the lowercase g follow that convention? It seems to make me almost stumble while reading and do a double take on what the letter is. But maybe it's just because I'm new to the font.
minroot 5y ago
It's to shapy, eyes don't like it
asimjalis 5y ago
I like Comic Mono. It feels informal, playful, produces no fatigue, and keeps me from taking my code too seriously. https://dtinth.github.io/comic-mono-font/ https://dtinth.github.io/comic-mono-font/
- fleaaa 5y ago
  I recommend agave(NF), if you want a similar vein but a bit less cheerful. It's so easy on my eyes.
k__ 5y ago
It's really pleasant on the eyes, even in running text. I'm using Fira Code and it's only good for code. When I use it in the CLI everything looks off. MonoLisa could solve this!
kag0 5y ago
Awe, the script version doesn't have ligatures. Some people think I'm a weirdo but I really like having my keywords in ligatured script and the rest of the code normal.
- okonet 5y ago
  What do you mean by that? Adding “script” variant only for language-specific keywords? I think we could consider doing this… the tricky part is to know what language you’re using so it looks like different ligatures depending on the language.
phkahler 5y ago
Looks good. I'd like fonts meant for technical use to include the following 3 unicode symbols: 21A7-depth 2334-counterbore 2335-countersink. These are standard for hole annotations on CAD drawings.
nunez 5y ago
This looks like the DejaVu Sans Mono font that I've been using for 10+ years now.
stayux 5y ago
Beauty! My personal preference is iA Writer Mono. https://github.com/iaolo/iA-Fonts/tree/master/iA%20Writer%20Mono https://github.com/iaolo/iA-Fonts/tree/master/iA%20Writer%20...
- BrainBlur 5y ago
  This post led me to a nice journey where I finally ended up replacing my handy friend Fira Code Finally with iA Writer Mono. Fantastic !
cosmiccatnap 5y ago
efficax 5y ago
> As software developers, we always strive for better tools but rarely consider font as such. A quick search of hn shows the opposite: it seems like we're always talking about fonts and releasing fonts and comparing fonts. I practically have monospace font fatigue. But yeah this font looks nice enough
pl0x 5y ago
Shame this is such an expensive paid font. Flagging for the shameless promotion.
TranquilMarmot 5y ago
Since these comments just seem to be suggesting alternatives or chiding this font for its price tag, I'll jump in and say that I bought it about a year ago and absolutely love it. There was definitely some sticker-shock at the price at first. After staring at MonoLisa in editors for 8+ hours a day for over a year, I can say that I _really_ love this font. Installing it is the first thing I do when setting up a new environment. It reads well in code and in the terminal, and I even wrote a significant amount of prose (60k+ words) in it and it was a pleasure. Definitely do not regret spending the money.
nieve 5y ago
I don't know what they were doing with their javascript, but they broke both the reload button & ctrl-R as well as maxing a CPU for 30s after closing the tab. Possibly something with the canvas, I got a fingerprinting attempt warning for that.
- fleaaa 5y ago
  me too, somewhere in that site is messed up so bad.
Maxence 5y ago
I find that font very beautiful and pleasant to look at. That said, the licensing seems completely out of touch from reality to me. Today we are living in the cloud area, where data and and workspace are replicated across devices. When I read that you need multiple licences to have it on more than 2 personal devices, that sounds too much of a hassle to consider buying it.
konart 5y ago
The way "Cc" is drawn makes it harder to read for me for some reason. Almost as if the letter is about to fuse with the next one. >CG >Different terminals of capitals Doesn't really work well for me.
k1ll3r 5y ago
50$ for the basic font package, 240$ for the "pro" package (discounted!) LOL
Karen48 5y ago
[dead]
tech2 5y ago
Perhaps I'm missing why this is desired for fonts in general, but my tendency when selecting one for editing code is to use one with a smaller vertical line spacing to minimise spacing between lines (and therefore fit more lines on screen). Why do people appear to prefer the opposite (massive distance between lines)? I'm currently using Input Mono, not because I like it specifically as a font, but because it's relatively narrow, and because its vertical spacing is smaller than many others.
- fdewnijfwg 5y ago
  > Why do people appear to prefer the opposite (massive distance between lines)? Readability. Having text crammed into as little space as possible is efficient, but many people have problem reading it.
  - tech2 5y ago
    Sure, I guess my question is around why people would consider a line in a sea of space more legible than the same x-height font with less space below it. I guess I could have an unusual take on this, but I find a lot of mono fonts seem to have massive inter-line spacing. So much so that their appearance is almost jarring to me. I find it disruptive to read. If I had issues with the legibility of a font then I'd increase its size, not the spacing between lines. As mentioned earlier though, I guess I'm an odd-one-out here, I'm seeking to understand how/why my view here is unusual.
- ryanbrunner 5y ago
  Navigation tools in code editors are generally good enough that I'll sacrifice information density for readability (i.e. I can get where I want to go fairly easily, so it's not really essential that it's on screen). Also the methods in the codebase I'm working in are nearly always < 10 lines long, so the 'unit' of code I need to see at once comfortably fits no matter how much vertical space is used.
iLoveOncall 5y ago
> Designing a monospace font is much harder than a traditional, proportional one: being constrained by the same width of all glyphs can result in a boring or unreadable font. A very ironic statement because I find the font to be absolutely unreadable.
- omnicognate 5y ago
  And I find it very readable and pleasant. This is why there's more than one font in the world.
  - iLoveOncall 5y ago
    But there shouldn't, one day Comic Sans will rule them all.
dragonwriter 5y ago
The roman (not italic or script, though) “g” is horrible and doesn't fit with the other letters that would normally sit their main body on the baseline but also have a descender. Why is its upper portion raised and squashed, and it's tail so misshapen? I cannot look at text in this font without the feeling that every “g” is reaching out from the screen and slapping me in the eye.
- christophilus 5y ago
  It’s a bit odd but doesn’t bother me too much. The totally different italicized “a” really throws me off and looks like an “o” to my blurry pre-coffee morning eyes.
- FrostKiwi 5y ago
  It's very funny to me how the 99€ Plus version and 199€ Pro version advertise an alternate g as a selling feature.
NylaTheWolf 5y ago
I like how it makes some aesthetic changes while also maintaining that "programmer" font. That's super cute. Though honestly, I'm mainly focused on the name. That's such a fantastic and clever name for a font and I can't get over it.
ThinkBeat 5y ago
Prices: Personal: $59 Plus: $129 Professional: $239
amai 5y ago
Another coding font, thank goodness! I was getting nervous, because it took more than 24 hours since the last one was announced.
gymshoes 5y ago
After switching a lot of programming fonts and using Fira Code for a long time, I've now ended up using whatever the default font is that comes preset on VS Code

402 points by qubitcoder 5y ago

> being constrained by the same width of all glyphs can result in a boring or unreadable font. I don't see how "boring" is an issue here. If the whole thing has a goal of functionality, why do I care if it's boring? And what is a "boring" font anyway? Reminds me of the Apple-induced desire to call everything "stunning" or "beautiful."

CRConrad 5y ago
> I don't see how "boring" is an issue here. If the whole thing has a goal of functionality, why do I care if it's boring? Exactly. Or actually, to go even further: On the contrary, "boring" may well be an issue, but in the sense that that's what we want. When you write code -- or prose, marketing copy, poetry, whatever -- what you want to concentrate on is the content of your text, not the esthetic of the letterforms. "Boring" is the opposite of "captures your attention", and if I want to focus my attention on the meaning of groups of letters, "boring" -- not grabbing my attention -- is exactly what I want the shapes of the letters themselves to be. And yes, I want them all to be the same width, so I can line up repetitive bits of code (or poetry?) below each other and match -- catch -- the non-repetitive bits at a glance. (Sorry, we can't all write in bone-DRY functional languages; SQL is pretty damn verbose and often, yes, repetitive.) IMO that's part of the content I want to focus on.

bitwize 5y ago

Another day, another Letter Gothic lookalike "developer font". I do not feel particularly motivated to switch away from the terminal bitmap fonts I normally use. There's something about an 8x8, 8x16, or similar small numbers grid of pixels -- the constraints seemed to breed creativity that you don't see too much of anymore in monospaced fonts for coding/terminal use.

enricozb 5y ago
Curious which bitmap font you use? I use terminus.
- bitwize 5y ago
  Terminus is a great one, but right now I'm partial to the Atari ST 8x16 font.

roughly 5y ago

> As software developers, we always strive for better tools but rarely consider font as such. … where have YOU been spending time?

stormking 5y ago

I don't understand how they can advertise this font being "wider" than other ones. I skipped all those modern Programming Fonts because none of them is as condensed and readable as "TheSans Mono Condensed". That font is terrible because its basically still ASCII only, but I use it everywhere. I would pay good money for a Unicode version.

kevwil 5y ago

- While the effort to create fonts is not trivial and should be rewarded, this seems expensive. I've bought fonts before, but they were like $5-15, not $100. - It's fantastic to see the variety of human experience on display in the wide variety of font preferences. I used to thing "why to we need more than one?" LOL - My favorite so far is Source Code Pro.

zestyping 5y ago

Please stop it with the "coding ligatures" already. They are not helpful and only serve to obscure the code being written. This has got to be one of my least favourite trends in programming aesthetics these days. For a font claiming to "follow function" to devote so much effort to sacrificing function for the _vogue du jour_ is especially rich.

taeric 5y ago
I mean... The existence of ligatures is almost by definition strictly aesthetic. And on that measure, it either brings you a smile to notice that f and i, for example, are joined; or you didn't even notice it. That is, I won't claim they help readability. But they do make me smile, and don't seem to hurt. (I'm assuming they disappear on copy operations. Mac OS' habit of replacing -- with a longer dash is painful when sending cli arguments.)
- dsr_ 5y ago
  There's a third option: "What is that?" When I'm reading fiction, I generally don't mind ligatures. I find them oppressively obscurantist in any situation where I want to know clearly and distinctly what each character is -- i.e. code and science/math/engineering.
  - taeric 5y ago
    I'd wager that the vast majority of the time, you just don't notice them. About the only time they are easily visible is in large type, when they really shouldn't be used. It's kind of like right justified text. Done well, it shouldn't be noticed how it was done.
    - dsr_ 5y ago
      Please don't tell me what I do and don't see when I just told you what I see and how I feel about it.
      - 5y ago

izietto 5y ago

I can't really move away from: - Dejavu Sans Mono on the editor - Ubuntu Mono on the terminal Maybe it's just that Ubuntu renders such fonts beautifully, but any other font (except maybe Roboto) is an eyesore, to me

solarmist 5y ago

Are there plans to support Arabic, Japanese, Korean or other missing languages? I do a lot of NLP work in various languages.

maccolgan 5y ago
Is Monospace Arabic a real thing?
- solarmist 5y ago
  To the best of my knowledge. I would expect programmers to need it the same as in any other language. https://makkuk.com/kawkab-mono/ https://makkuk.com/kawkab-mono/
okonet 5y ago
We might consider doing that if we see a big demand but currently the economics of adding those languages doesn’t add up for us.

yohgen 5y ago

The site lists increased width of the font as a feature - but after discovering PragmataPro and Iosevka (that is usually mentioned as an open source alternative) I fell in love with how much horizontal space can be saved with those fonts. I often find myself opening two shells/IDEs side by side, and at these moments I truly appreciate how little space they occupy. From my perspective, it's a no for MonoLisa.

adultSwim 5y ago

I'm thinking about getting this. I really liked the side by side demo. Paying for my tools is worth it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mortenjorck 5y ago

What I like most about this font is that it has a completely different aesthetic from my favorite monospace, JetBrains mono. It has more of the humanist flavor of a Frutiger versus the DIN-like rationalism most monospace fonts adopt.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

josefrichter 5y ago

I am one of those using this font for ~1 year now, very happy with it. As a designer/developer with penchant for typography I am the perfect target customer I guess.

zppln 5y ago

I thought this was gonna be yet another monospace font I wouldn't be able to tell from all the others, but fuck me as soon as the page loaded this one just spoke to me. Grabbing this for sure, well done!

dokka 5y ago

very cool! it passes the 1IilL0Oo test. I'll give it a try.

jonpalmisc 5y ago

On the topic of fonts: If your font of choice has it, try using the medium weight as the "normal" weight in your editor — I've found I prefer it to the regular weight with most fonts. I started doing this after noticing that the default Xcode font is SF Mono Medium.

rdrey 5y ago
I thought I was the only one doing this :P It definitely helps at smaller sizes, narrow fonts like MonoLisa simply become too faint to read easily otherwise
CharlesW 5y ago
For anyone else who wasn't sure which is bolder, Normal/Regular is considered weight 400 in CSS while Medium is 500.

vinkelhake 5y ago

If you're willing to spend money on a font for coding, then do yourself a favor and take a look at PragmataPro as well. I bought a license (checks notes...) 8 years ago and it has served me very well. If I was not down to pay for a font, then I'd probably use one of Iosevka's forms. Personally, however, it became clear to me that just like my monitor, the font I spend hours looking at every day is also worth some money. https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/ https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/

makepanic 5y ago
There's also Iosevka[1] which is open source[2] and also similar to Pragmata. It even has a Pragmata Pro Style. [1] - https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ [2] - https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka
- swah 5y ago
  Yeah - I paid for Pragmata back in the day and totally forgot about it when Iosevka appeared. Even reminds me a little bit of 6x13 which I used for so long with my Dell 22"...
huhtenberg 5y ago
Pragmata Pro is quite nice... but not for coding. I like narrow fonts. Barlow is excellent. News Gothic is fantastic. Geo Grotesque is super beautiful. But it just doesn't work for me when a coding font is narrow. Fonts like Iosevka and Pragmata are harder to read than needed and for no clear benefit. Especially when used for projects based on C and derivatives. If you ever find yourself needing to cram more symbols per line onto your screen, it's a sign that there's a coding style problem! Lines simply should be short enough to not require horizontal compression. Obviously, YMMV, to each their own, etc.
- lobstrosity420 5y ago
  I keep my code below the 80 column mark, as is common. For me, the reason I like the more narrow Iosevka is because it lets me have more split buffers open on the same monitor. With Iosevka I can have 3 splits with a little over 80 columns each, other fonts only let me have two. I never noticed a decrease in readability but I've been using Iosevka for a very long time now, perhaps it's time to try out a wider font and see if it's worth it.

flobosg 5y ago

The whitespace only ligatures look like an interesting idea and a good alternative to full ones.

diputsmonro 5y ago
I feel like I'm the only person who hates ligatures in coding fonts, but I agree that these whitespace ligatures are (mostly) a good compromise.

lanewinfield 5y ago

I'm a big fan of Input Sans as well: https://djr.com/input/ https://djr.com/input/

mikojan 5y ago

Not a fan of these sharp modern faces in general. However, the small text in this one looks particularly "smudgy". I stopped hopping monospace fonts when I discovered Go Mono. Go Mono does not seem to get blurry even at small sizes. M, m, n always look impeccable. Not so here. I'm not sure. Maybe something is wrong with the text-rendering in my browser.

shadowofneptune 5y ago
I very much like Go Mono, despite it being something of an oddball. https://www.programmingfonts.org/#go-mono https://www.programmingfonts.org/#go-mono A serif monospace font that doesn't look it came from a typewriter? Very little separation between letters? A font made for specifically for typesetting one programming language? It really doesn't seem like it should work, but it does for me. I have it installed as the system monospace font on every computer I can.

xgme 5y ago

Isn't "increased width" an ungodly sin to the developer lord? If anything, we want to see more in a given space, not less...

qbasic_forever 5y ago
For terminal/console use wide fonts hurt IMHO. I really like Iosevka, it even has a terminal optimized version that's explicitly less wide: https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ https://typeof.net/Iosevka/
fictorial 5y ago
Stay away from Vulf Mono then!
chrisseaton 5y ago
> Isn't "increased width" an ungodly sin to the developer lord? If anything we want to see more in a given space, not less... I think it increases readability. I need to read what I'm looking at, not a lot of things I'm not looking at.
- xgme 5y ago
  Not if a part of a line is out of the window right? This makes splitting harder, therefore, reading harder
  - sidpatil 5y ago
    Why not just use word wrapping?
    - xgme 5y ago
      I'm already going with 80 or 120 chars per line. Why would I word wrap well written code? Also word wrappings will lose all the preceding tabs. It makes it 100x harder to read. The issue is I will have less split space.

speedgoose 5y ago

Since we are talking about our favourite coding fonts, my personal choice is on Comic Code. I find it very easy to read and better than the other mono comic sans fonts. https://tosche.net/fonts/comic-code https://tosche.net/fonts/comic-code

kbd 5y ago
Highly recommend Fantasque Sans Mono for a realistic take on the "comic-style" coding font - https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans
- epolanski 5y ago
  It's weird but it feels extremely..welcoming and non-intimidating. I'm gonna give it a spin tomorrow even though I love jetbrains mono.
- tmalsburg2 5y ago
  Seconded. It’s pleasantly playful but not so much as to distract. Very happy with it.
agrippanux 5y ago
Cascadia Code (free, from Microsoft) is surprisingly good. There is a clone of it on NerdFonts that adds more ligatures if that’s your jam.
- thayne 5y ago
  Maybe a bit pedantic, but nerdfont adds icons, not ligatures.
sebastianconcpt 5y ago
Oh god... I can't say if you're trolling or not.
- StevePerkins 5y ago

pianoben 5y ago

The first font with a pre-existing theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMH96B8QWcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMH96B8QWcc

maupin 5y ago

Looks good, but I'm still in love with Consolas.

bjornsteffanson 5y ago
Same. You might find Inconsolata interesting, too: https://github.com/googlefonts/Inconsolata https://github.com/googlefonts/Inconsolata

kbd 5y ago

Unfortunately not available to compare on https://www.programmingfonts.org/ https://www.programmingfonts.org/ While I'm here: Victor Mono has been my programming font of choice for a while now: https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/ https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/ Oh, look at that, the Victor Mono homepage has a font comparison slider that allows you to compare it to MonoLisa! MonoLisa advertises that it's wider than other monospace fonts, and you can really see that in the comparison. One of the things I appreciate about Victor Mono is that it is narrower than many other monospace fonts (while still being very readable), allowing you to fit more code side-by-side.

kevwil 5y ago
Thanks. A bit narrow for my tastes but I'm impressed by the semi-cursive italic idea. Clever. Giving it a try right now!
cormullion 5y ago
Another site for comparing fonts is the excellent https://devfonts.gafi.dev/ https://devfonts.gafi.dev/. This also doesn't have MonoLisa, though.
shp0ngle 5y ago
Just add it there! It's on github https://github.com/braver/programmingfonts https://github.com/braver/programmingfonts edit: ahhh it's a paid font. so nope
hunterb123 5y ago
Thanks for the resource, that's a cool site!
Ezku 5y ago
Oh, this was a new one for me. In case you like narrow but Victor’s not your thing, I can enthusiastically point you towards Iosevka. (That’s also available in Victor’s comparison picker. Nice!)
- daliusd 5y ago

azeirah 5y ago

My favorite font still remains fantasque sans mono. It's loosely based on comic sans, I just need a little playful edge in my coding job. Otherwise it gets too stale. Love the font

triaste 5y ago
I Completely agree! It is my daily driver font. Use it everywhere, great for shells too. And it's free https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans

ashton314 5y ago

> As software developers, we always strive for better tools but rarely consider font as such. Meanwhile, I look at new coding fonts on at least a monthly basis. Nothing beats Input Mono [^1] for me; I actually like wider fonts, so I might take this one out for a spin. [^1]: https://input.djr.com/ https://input.djr.com/

cercatrova 5y ago

Do people really care that much about editor fonts? I just use SF Mono and call it a day. I've never had a problem where the font, of all things, was the main cause of something not working for me.

imglorp 5y ago
No, sorry fontographers, but I can't tell the difference between the scores of mono fonts created in the last half dozen years. As long as it's kinda pleasing and can easily see the differences between () and {}, 1iIlL| and oO0, I'm all set.
the_mitsuhiko 5y ago
If you're looking your day at nothing else but text it's the most obvious thing to spend time and money on to improve. Sure, it's an utilitarian thing at the end of the day, but why should it not look pleasant to your eyes? I don't think I ever had _a problem_ with a font, but that does not mean I do not want to spend a bit of time and effort to improve my experience. I could probably also get away with a much worse keyboard or monitor and be just as productive. But would I enjoy it just as much? Probably not.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  Idk, putting the $199 towards buying a nicer monitor seems like the pro gamer move. There are billions of free fonts out there.
  - the_mitsuhiko 5y ago
    I'm not sure what you're referring to. The font is a one time purchase and significantly cheaper than a new monitor. Both things (a better monitor and a better font) can make you enjoy the things you're doing more. Yes, there might be billions of free fonts out there, but the cost of that font is also not exactly making a huge impact for me that I have to save money there. Why would I start saving with the font all the sudden when I spend more money on literally everything else? Does not really compute to me.

StevePerkins 5y ago

I wonder how many people glancing at the landing page have browsed over to the download page, and discovered that this a paid font? To the tune of $69 to $239, depending on the options you want. If this were something really revolutionary, then okay. But this looks like every other Bitstream Vera Sans Mono variant, just tweaked to be a touch wider than Fira Code or Jetbrains Mono. But half of the fonts on https://www.programmingfonts.org https://www.programmingfonts.org are Bitstream Vera Sans Mono variants, a touch wider than Fira Code or Jetbrains Mono. And they're all open source and free.

moffkalast 5y ago
People charging $199 for a slightly wider Lucida Console, you can't make this shit up. The marketing is so outrageous. In case someone's seriously considering this, here are an additional two sites that have literally hundreds of CC0 and other free to use fonts, not just monospace: https://www.1001freefonts.com https://www.1001freefonts.com http://allfont.net http://allfont.net DIN 1451 Mittelschrift is my personal favorite.
- drewzero1 5y ago
  I love the DIN family but haven't been able to find a monospaced variant for coding/terminal use. I'd add Abstract Fonts[1] to the list, though you have to watch the license (many are only free for personal/non-commercial use). [1] https://www.abstractfonts.com/ https://www.abstractfonts.com/
- thor_molecules 5y ago
  If you like symbols and fancy terminal stuff, I'd also like to recommend any of the Nerd Fonts - all free. https://www.nerdfonts.com/ https://www.nerdfonts.com/
  - john_alan 5y ago
    Superb. Love this font.
- 5y ago

dawei67 5y ago

looks very bad on non-retina windows display jetbrains mono is still the best

okonet 5y ago
We are aware of some windows related issues on non-hidpi displays. It’s the price to pay for less geometric shape of glyphs unfortunately.

GuB-42 5y ago

I am the only one who finds fonts a bit expensive for personal use? It is not a rant, I am not saying it isn't worth it, that font designers can't make money, etc... But that puts it on the same level as tools like Sublime Text or Beyond Compare. For me, it is enough of a turn off not to use a commercial font, especially considering that the free offering is quite good. I totally understand the higher price for commercial use, here, it is cheap compared to the costs of hiring a designer, and it may have a real impact on your sales and ultimately earn you money. But why is the price for personal use around $60? Is it some kind of a sweet spot because most people won't buy fonts anyways, even for $1, but those who do expect to pay that kind of money. Does it account for piracy, which I guess is easy and goes unnoticed if you only use it personally?

sytelus 5y ago
Selling font direct to consumers is extremely bad business model. This doesn’t work. People are not keen on shelling out 100s of dollars when IDEs already come with decent fonts and other thousands of free fonts readily available. This font looks great but most people would argue about marginal benefit. I would hope they would partner with IDE makers and big tech and give them license to use it for their expected revenue instead.
- sytelus 5y ago
  I also think creators of this font likely have not performed any market testing or studied price-revenue curves. I might take a bet that $5 flat price would produce higher revenues. Another option for them is to bundle many such fonts by forming group with other creators together. That has higher chance of selling a professional fonts as package to IDE makers and big tech.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  Sorry, but no IDE comes with a proper 3278-like font. Not even IBM's Developer for z/OS comes with one (they commissioned that other font called Plex... who would take seriously a font named after a media player?). Luckily, everyone can get one at https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font. Note: shameless plug ;-)

andrewl-hn 5y ago

I looked at it a few years ago and dismissed it because it’s so similar to Source Code Pro in terms of spacing, size and overall feel. Source Code Pro is an excellent wide font that I’ve been using since its release about a decade ago. And it’s free, and there are Nerd Font variants with ligatures if you’re into that. I noticed that MonaLisa added script variant last year, so if you want something like that in your editor it’s a very good choice. In fact, I’d recommend it over Operator Mono (the OG monospaced font with scripted italics), because the later has a much smaller character set. Or, pick a free Victor Mono if you like narrower symbols. Alas, us - wide font users - have to pay for a script italics :)

rubyist5eva 5y ago

this is too expensive, I would pay $40

divbzero 5y ago

Is this part about terminals actually true? Or a tad exaggerated for marketing? > MonoLisa uses open forms and terminals (starting and ending points) that are pointing towards the neighboring letters to let the eye follow the line of text fluently. Regardless, I like the font overall. My go-to is Fira Code but this might be worth a try.

deathanatos 5y ago
I'm still not getting how the top of the a isn't pointing to the left, completely opposite the arrow they've drawn on it. (Or, also, that anything like what the site describes actually happens. The entire page is [citation needed].)

andjd 5y ago

I'm going to hop on my hobby horse again for a second: One of their first points is this: >Designing a monospace font is much harder than a traditional, proportional one: being constrained by the same width of all glyphs can result in a boring or unreadable font. And they're absolutely right. But it begs the first-principals question-- why code using a monospace font? Today, every major editor that isn't terminal-based supports proportional width fonts beautifully. It's also incredibly rare to see modern style guides that depend on having consistent column widths. In 2022, there's no technical reason to code using monospaced fonts. And there are a ton of beautiful and readable fonts out there -- There are probably a dozen pre-installed on your system that are more beautiful and readable than this font. You see this tag line time-and-time again. "A font designed by and for software developers." But font design is and art and a discipline. Doing it well is very hard.

toomanydoubts 5y ago
I had never considered using variable width fonts for programming. I can see some minor issues, like vim users(on an environment that support variable-width fonts) now have no consistency on where their cursor will land when using j/k to move up and down lines, but I think I will still try it out.
thiht 5y ago
> why code using a monospace font? Because unlike prose, we don’t reason about code in terms of words, sentences or paragraphs but rather in terms of statements, lines and blocks. Navigating between visual lines vertically makes sense when navigating in code. And to optimize this kind of navigation, monospace fonts are the best choice because where your cursor lands is predictible. It also brings cool features such as block selection which you can’t implement properly with proportional fonts.
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  I don't quite understand this. I've used proportional fonts in PyCharm and other editors for many years, and vertical navigation and block selection work fine.
- 5y ago

lifeplusplus 5y ago

I will never use a font like this wider? hieroglyphs?? LOL no

bussierem 5y ago

The comparison to Fira Code is hilarious, basically no deviation except 'r'. Just go use Fira Code it's at least free

michaklang 5y ago

Holy macaroni! Looks awesome!

jay_kyburz 5y ago

There is a font on my KDE desktop called just "Monospace" and its a great font. I can't find a font file called Monospace. Does anybody know what the font is? I would love to have it on my windows machine.

michaelmrose 5y ago
I'm guessing this is just whatever the default monospace font is rather than being a font called Monospace.
gatonegro 5y ago
I'm pretty sure the default "monospace" font in KDE is mapped to Hack: https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/ https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/
anuragsoni 5y ago
Different distributions pick different defaults for `Monospace`. If you are using KDE on ubuntu, `Monospace` might be pointing to `Ubuntu Mono`. On other linux distros if they are sticking to KDE defaults, then Monospace will point to Hack [1] [1] https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/ https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/
- jay_kyburz 5y ago
  I'm on Kubuntu, Its not Ubunto Mono and I'm 99% sure its not Hack. You can select both those options and both look quite different. I wish I was at home so I could post a screenshot.
chrismorgan 5y ago
I think you should be able to run `fc-match monospace` to find what it is resolving it to.
- jay_kyburz 5y ago
  Thanks very much! It is NotoSansMono-Regular.ttf

dsmmcken 5y ago

The theme switcher (coloured dots, top right) switching between a variety of common editor themes is a nice touch.

sergiotapia 5y ago

I never even considered people bought fonts for local dev use. Sounds pretty steep.

timfi 5y ago

This may seem like a minor nitpick but it's something that popped out at me: italisizing a font shouldn't add or remove serifs. There is a reason why Unicode defines both sans- and serif versions of italics.

shmerl 5y ago

It tired a bunch of different fonts, but nothing felt as good as Dejavu Sans Mono.

jupp0r 5y ago

If I was going to pay for it, I wish they'd offer nerdfont patched versions of their font (see https://www.nerdfonts.com/ https://www.nerdfonts.com/).

okonet 5y ago
We are looking into this and might provide a solution soon.

bostonsre 5y ago

> MonoLisa uses open forms and terminals (starting and ending points) that are pointing towards the neighboring letters to let the eye follow the line of text fluently. Does the lowercase g follow that convention? It seems to make me almost stumble while reading and do a double take on what the letter is. But maybe it's just because I'm new to the font.

minroot 5y ago

It's to shapy, eyes don't like it

asimjalis 5y ago

I like Comic Mono. It feels informal, playful, produces no fatigue, and keeps me from taking my code too seriously. https://dtinth.github.io/comic-mono-font/ https://dtinth.github.io/comic-mono-font/

fleaaa 5y ago
I recommend agave(NF), if you want a similar vein but a bit less cheerful. It's so easy on my eyes.

k__ 5y ago

It's really pleasant on the eyes, even in running text. I'm using Fira Code and it's only good for code. When I use it in the CLI everything looks off. MonoLisa could solve this!

kag0 5y ago

Awe, the script version doesn't have ligatures. Some people think I'm a weirdo but I really like having my keywords in ligatured script and the rest of the code normal.

okonet 5y ago
What do you mean by that? Adding “script” variant only for language-specific keywords? I think we could consider doing this… the tricky part is to know what language you’re using so it looks like different ligatures depending on the language.

phkahler 5y ago

Looks good. I'd like fonts meant for technical use to include the following 3 unicode symbols: 21A7-depth 2334-counterbore 2335-countersink. These are standard for hole annotations on CAD drawings.

nunez 5y ago

This looks like the DejaVu Sans Mono font that I've been using for 10+ years now.

stayux 5y ago

Beauty! My personal preference is iA Writer Mono. https://github.com/iaolo/iA-Fonts/tree/master/iA%20Writer%20Mono https://github.com/iaolo/iA-Fonts/tree/master/iA%20Writer%20...

BrainBlur 5y ago
This post led me to a nice journey where I finally ended up replacing my handy friend Fira Code Finally with iA Writer Mono. Fantastic !

cosmiccatnap 5y ago

efficax 5y ago

> As software developers, we always strive for better tools but rarely consider font as such. A quick search of hn shows the opposite: it seems like we're always talking about fonts and releasing fonts and comparing fonts. I practically have monospace font fatigue. But yeah this font looks nice enough

pl0x 5y ago

Shame this is such an expensive paid font. Flagging for the shameless promotion.

TranquilMarmot 5y ago

Since these comments just seem to be suggesting alternatives or chiding this font for its price tag, I'll jump in and say that I bought it about a year ago and absolutely love it. There was definitely some sticker-shock at the price at first. After staring at MonoLisa in editors for 8+ hours a day for over a year, I can say that I _really_ love this font. Installing it is the first thing I do when setting up a new environment. It reads well in code and in the terminal, and I even wrote a significant amount of prose (60k+ words) in it and it was a pleasure. Definitely do not regret spending the money.

nieve 5y ago

I don't know what they were doing with their javascript, but they broke both the reload button & ctrl-R as well as maxing a CPU for 30s after closing the tab. Possibly something with the canvas, I got a fingerprinting attempt warning for that.

fleaaa 5y ago
me too, somewhere in that site is messed up so bad.

Maxence 5y ago

I find that font very beautiful and pleasant to look at. That said, the licensing seems completely out of touch from reality to me. Today we are living in the cloud area, where data and and workspace are replicated across devices. When I read that you need multiple licences to have it on more than 2 personal devices, that sounds too much of a hassle to consider buying it.

konart 5y ago

The way "Cc" is drawn makes it harder to read for me for some reason. Almost as if the letter is about to fuse with the next one. >CG >Different terminals of capitals Doesn't really work well for me.

k1ll3r 5y ago

50$ for the basic font package, 240$ for the "pro" package (discounted!) LOL

Karen48 5y ago

[dead]

tech2 5y ago

Perhaps I'm missing why this is desired for fonts in general, but my tendency when selecting one for editing code is to use one with a smaller vertical line spacing to minimise spacing between lines (and therefore fit more lines on screen). Why do people appear to prefer the opposite (massive distance between lines)? I'm currently using Input Mono, not because I like it specifically as a font, but because it's relatively narrow, and because its vertical spacing is smaller than many others.

fdewnijfwg 5y ago
> Why do people appear to prefer the opposite (massive distance between lines)? Readability. Having text crammed into as little space as possible is efficient, but many people have problem reading it.
- tech2 5y ago
  Sure, I guess my question is around why people would consider a line in a sea of space more legible than the same x-height font with less space below it. I guess I could have an unusual take on this, but I find a lot of mono fonts seem to have massive inter-line spacing. So much so that their appearance is almost jarring to me. I find it disruptive to read. If I had issues with the legibility of a font then I'd increase its size, not the spacing between lines. As mentioned earlier though, I guess I'm an odd-one-out here, I'm seeking to understand how/why my view here is unusual.
ryanbrunner 5y ago
Navigation tools in code editors are generally good enough that I'll sacrifice information density for readability (i.e. I can get where I want to go fairly easily, so it's not really essential that it's on screen). Also the methods in the codebase I'm working in are nearly always < 10 lines long, so the 'unit' of code I need to see at once comfortably fits no matter how much vertical space is used.

iLoveOncall 5y ago

> Designing a monospace font is much harder than a traditional, proportional one: being constrained by the same width of all glyphs can result in a boring or unreadable font. A very ironic statement because I find the font to be absolutely unreadable.

omnicognate 5y ago
And I find it very readable and pleasant. This is why there's more than one font in the world.
- iLoveOncall 5y ago
  But there shouldn't, one day Comic Sans will rule them all.

dragonwriter 5y ago

The roman (not italic or script, though) “g” is horrible and doesn't fit with the other letters that would normally sit their main body on the baseline but also have a descender. Why is its upper portion raised and squashed, and it's tail so misshapen? I cannot look at text in this font without the feeling that every “g” is reaching out from the screen and slapping me in the eye.

christophilus 5y ago
It’s a bit odd but doesn’t bother me too much. The totally different italicized “a” really throws me off and looks like an “o” to my blurry pre-coffee morning eyes.
FrostKiwi 5y ago
It's very funny to me how the 99€ Plus version and 199€ Pro version advertise an alternate g as a selling feature.

NylaTheWolf 5y ago

I like how it makes some aesthetic changes while also maintaining that "programmer" font. That's super cute. Though honestly, I'm mainly focused on the name. That's such a fantastic and clever name for a font and I can't get over it.

ThinkBeat 5y ago

Prices: Personal: $59 Plus: $129 Professional: $239

amai 5y ago

Another coding font, thank goodness! I was getting nervous, because it took more than 24 hours since the last one was announced.

gymshoes 5y ago

After switching a lot of programming fonts and using Fira Code for a long time, I've now ended up using whatever the default font is that comes preset on VS Code