My personal request for anyone developing a programmer's font: on your splash page, be sure to include prominent examples of these characters: "0OIl1|ij"<p>I have no patience for a font that doesn't get this right, and only limited patience for a font that doesn't make it clear that they <i>did</i> get it right.<p>:::scuttles back to DejaVu Sans Mono good-enough-ness:::
So many good things to say about Iosevka. The font is great and the “customizability” is top-notch.<p>I created my own flavor of Iosevka called Monocode that I use everywhere a monospaced font makes sense.<p><a href="https://github.com/aaronmbos/monocode">https://github.com/aaronmbos/monocode</a>
I’m a font nerd, and this one is easily my favorite.<p>As a Debian sysdmin, I don’t do much in the way of pure coding, but I use terminals frequently, write Bash scripts, Dockerfiles/Docker Compose files, and generally engage with monospaced text daily. Iosevka has become my default over the last several months, to the extent that I have added its GitHub repo to my dotfiles and deploy it everywhere that I operate. It is one of the only narrow monospaced typefaces that doesn’t look squished, but rather crisp and clean while being extremely efficient in its use of space. It’s italics are stylish without being overly decorative, and its glyphs/Powerline support seem to just work across Linux, MacOS, and Windows.
Iosevka is the best font I've used. I've repeatedly tried to switch, but I end up just circling back.<p>PragmataPro is the only font that has come close, due to the author's obsessive optimization (including embedded pixmaps, something Iosevka lacks and may always lack).<p>The pricing is a bit weird on PragmataPro, which scares me away from it. "Essential" includes no coding ligatures (if that's your thing), makes you pay for regular and bold separately and has no italic at 20 euros a whack. With ligatures, its 60 euros each style.
With all these posts about fonts, I have to wonder, am I the weird one here for just using DejaVu Sans Mono for like past ten years and just, like, not caring that much? Does the font make that much of a difference?
I've standardized on the mplus Nerd Font: <a href="https://www.programmingfonts.org/#mplus" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.programmingfonts.org/#mplus</a><p>It's narrow, comes in a very light weight (I use weight 250 for coding), and works well in Emacs, VSCode, and iTerm2. I find that its bold and italics are easier to read than many other fonts, and that oO08 iIlL1 g9qCGQ are all distinguishable from each other.<p>I used to use Source Code Pro but found that I wanted something that allowed me to view more in the same width windows.<p>Another option is Victor Mono: <a href="https://www.programmingfonts.org/#victor-mono" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.programmingfonts.org/#victor-mono</a>
I've used it for years almost everywhere (terminal, IDE, my blog, even DuckDuckGo/Kagi with Iosevka Aile) and I absolutely love it. Looks great everywhere, and highly readable.
> <i>Monospace Iosevka contains various stylistic sets to change the shape of certain characters</i><p><i>That's</i> what's on display at the linked URL (if anyone else was confused)<p>You can also select variants for specific characters (there's 42 zeroes!): <a href="https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/blob/main/doc/character-variants.md">https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/blob/main/doc/character-...</a>
I've used Iosevka for many years. I love it's narrow but clear aesthetics. Makes vertically split tabs / windows more usable.<p>Must admit that I am a font / typeface hopper, I usually switch between Iosevka, Jetbrains Mono and more recently Comic Mono.
I freakin' love Iosevka. Most monospace fonts are kind of boring and look like variants of IBM Letter Gothic. The bitmap fonts from back in the day had character, so I often use those for terminals but they don't fit well in graphical IDEs. Fonts like Iosevka, Envy Code R, and Terminus have that "character" and make spending time reading the code in them more joyful.
This is fantastic! I've used JetBrains Mono for years now, but seeing that Iosevka can not only replicate it faithfully, but also allow me to apply my own tweaks makes me want to try Iosevka now!
The name reminds me of Iosefka, an NPC in the game Bloodborne: <a href="https://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/Iosefka" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/Iosefka</a><p>It appears these are two ways of spelling the same name, and that has made me curious about its etymology.<p>I've not found much in the way of clues. Most of the search results are either in reference to the font or to the game.<p>According to names.org, Iosefka is tagged with <i>Gender-Neutral</i> and <i>Hebrew</i>: <a href="https://www.names.org/n/iosefka/about" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.names.org/n/iosefka/about</a><p>Does anyone here have one of these names? Can you share the story behind them?
Looks nice, but seems like it has too much of customisation.<p>I'm using Fira Code for multiple years now and the setup is super straightforward. Just install, add it to config, enable ligatures and you are good to go.<p>Looking at the Iosevka page I'm just thinking what the hell is going on here? How do I even start choosing which variant to use? I like nice fonts, but I also like to have a clear way of doing things. Iosevka doesn't offer one. I guess it's there for a much more motivated aesthetes.
If you want to see what kind of customizations you can do with Iosevka, here's the blend that I use daily: <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~ashton314/iosevka-output" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://git.sr.ht/~ashton314/iosevka-output</a><p>I essentially wanted Input Mono [1] but with more characters. Iosevka has a stylistic preset ("ss18") that sets the character variants to match the designs of Input. There's also the "extended" family, which matches the width almost perfectly, albeit I need the font size to be 13pt for Iosevka to match what Input looks like at 12pt. Go figure.<p>[1]: <a href="https://input.djr.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://input.djr.com/</a>
I use a custom variant of Iosevka on my website and all of my side projects such as Arsène: <a href="https://arsene.fly.dev" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://arsene.fly.dev</a>. I like it because it makes Iaso not look like laso.
I try new fonts every now and then, but always find myself going back to Droid Sans Mono (looks very clear at tiny sizes). However, I switched to Iosevka a month ago (found by Googling for narrow monospace fonts), since its narrow enough to fit 80 columns in Emacs when my (Pine)phone's in portrait mode, and two 80-column buffers side-by-side in landscape mode :)
I forced myself to try it after years of using Input Mono Narrow (a really really good font), and was surprised to find that I like it even better than Input Mono.<p>It's good stuff.<p>If you have your favorite font and you find another font that seems interesting, I think it's important to force yourself to use something else for a week or two before you make a judgment. Habits die hard.
I'm thankful for Iosevka, it's been great. I even like the quasi-proportional version for code, Iosevka Aile: <a href="https://chris.printf.net/iosevka-aile.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://chris.printf.net/iosevka-aile.png</a>
I use a custom Iosevka (ORW) from someone's ricing repo.<p>I think it's a bit less narrow.<p><a href="https://github.com/s0la/orw/tree/master/.fonts">https://github.com/s0la/orw/tree/master/.fonts</a>
Haha, what a coincidence! I mention Iosevka and then three hours later, here it is submitted:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36784005">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36784005</a>
See also SARASA GOTHIC, a CJK programming font based on Iosevka and Source Han Sans.<p><a href="https://github.com/be5invis/Sarasa-Gothic">https://github.com/be5invis/Sarasa-Gothic</a>
I switched from Pragmata Pro to Iosevka Term Curly Slab a few years ago and I'm really happy with it. It's easy to read and I can fit a lot of code on one screen.
Since I've seen it (around HN, no less) years ago, it has been among the first few installations on every machine I handled.<p>Beautiful. It feels tall in just the right way.