
Show HN: Luculent, a new code/terminal font - a_e_k
http://eastfarthing.com/luculent/
======
nollidge
Still haven't found anything that beats Consolas (at least on Windows
machines). Inconsolata comes close, but the strokes are a bit thin and spacing
is too crowded.

EDIT: OK actually I just tried the hinted TTF version of Inconsolata from
Google Fonts [0] and the stroke width is way better. Still crowded - like each
glyph takes up juuuuuust a little too much of its bounding rectangle (whatever
you would call that).

[0]
[http://www.google.com/fonts#UsePlace:use/Collection:Inconsol...](http://www.google.com/fonts#UsePlace:use/Collection:Inconsolata)

~~~
chavesn
I use Mac, not Windows, so I'm sure I see them rendered quite differently than
you, but I prefer Source Code Pro.[1][2] They are extremely similar and I
agree nothing else comes very close.

It's the lower-case 'i' that does it for me.[3]

Fewer serifs in general allow me to read more quickly, I feel. 'i' has 1 to
Consolas' 3, while lower case 'l' (L) has 2 to Consolas' 3.

One negative is that I much prefer Consolas' 0-with-slant to Source Code Pro's
0-with-dot.

By the way, the first link below is from a very cool resource I just found
with votes and comparisons of many of the most popular choices:
[http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-
programming...](http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming-
fonts) (It seems the web has become more informative on this topic than the
last time I surveyed all the font options.)

Finally, this is what the designer of Source Code Pro, Paul D. Hunt, had to
say about the two[2]:

> _Consolas is narrower than most monospaced fonts at 55% of the Em square,
> where I stuck with 60% for Source Code. If the narrowness is a top selling
> point for you, then Consolas is definitely king._

[1]: [http://www.slant.co/topics/67/viewpoints/5/~what-are-the-
bes...](http://www.slant.co/topics/67/viewpoints/5/~what-are-the-best-
programming-fonts~source-code-pro)

[2]: [http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/09/source-code-
pro....](http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/09/source-code-pro.html)

[3]:
[http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/files/2012/09/Confusable...](http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/files/2012/09/Confusable_Chars.png)

~~~
3JPLW
I felt the exact same way about Consolas' i and l… so much so that I hacked
its metrics to remove the extra serifs.

[http://mbauman.net/geek/2009/03/15/minor-truetype-font-
editi...](http://mbauman.net/geek/2009/03/15/minor-truetype-font-editing-on-a-
mac/index.html)

~~~
johnbm
This is such a nerdy comment, and I love it.

------
DanielStraight
Always appreciate a new code font. This one seems to have a very laid-back,
"fun" style, which is really not for me, but still nice to see work in this
area.

(For reference, I use DejaVu Sans Mono, which is wonderfully plain and
simple.)

~~~
a_e_k
Thanks. I can't say that I ever really thought of it as having a particularly
"fun" style. Monaco and Monofur and some others always seemed far more so to
me. It could just be that it feels plain to me at this point due to
familiarity, however.

And yes, Deja is a good alternative too. I certainly used that one for a
while.

~~~
blueblob
Overall, great font! The only thing that I don't like is the lowercase i, but
maybe I am just being picky. All of the characters are very easy to
distinguish.

------
donut2d
I am enjoying this font. At first when I saw the screenshots I thought I
wouldn't. But, I like to give every new "programmer" font a try. I tried it
and I didn't like it at first but it's quickly growing on me. Seems to work
best at 13px in SublimeText 3 on my rMBP. If I make it smaller then I feel the
need to add line padding.

Before this I was using Fantasque Sans Mono[1]. Thanks for sharing!

[1]: [https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-
sans](https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans)

~~~
antonios
Fantasque is really nice, thanks!

------
aric
Here's an incomplete list I tested awhile ago:

    
    
      Andale Mono
      Bitstream Vera Sans Mono
      Consolas
      Courier
      Courier New
      DejaVu Sans Mono
      Droid Sans Mono
      Inconsolata
      Liberation Mono
      Lucida Console
      Monaco
      Source Code Pro
      Verdana  // yeah, Verdana is still a king of small
    

Luculent appears awkwardly tall, thin, and squished in Sublime. Very hard on
my eyes. Playful "i" but way too hectic altogether. I appreciate the
thoughtfulness in approach and hope it works well for others. For all the
people who love Verdana: the DejaVu or Bitstream (nearly the same, same
author) typefaces are the closest. Still using DejaVu Sans Mono for now.

~~~
Gigablah
What do you think of Dina?

[https://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina/](https://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina/)

~~~
aric
Good addition. Dina is thinner but _very_ similar in proportions to DejaVu at
size 8. But at 8 or above, it doesn't cut it, having less lines and lacking
enough weight to focus. (Note: I use a white background, which obviously
affects everything.) That said, Dina outshines DejaVu in readability for
anything smaller.

Edit: Dina has a lot of beauty. Nice blocky style once it's large enough. It's
also excellent at a very tiny scale in a web browser.

Edit2: Sublime is giving very different and inconsistent results vs. some IDEs
and other interfaces. Blah, really depends.

------
jamesbritt
Thanks for this. I think I will stick with Inconsolata but I'm glad people are
making new fonts and trying things out.

~~~
monkey_slap
Inconsolata is my favorite too. I've actually moved to Inconsolata-g because
of the "0"s
[http://leonardo-m.livejournal.com/77079.html](http://leonardo-m.livejournal.com/77079.html)

~~~
unfunco
I moved away from Inconsolata because of the lowercase g, and I was excited
about your link until I saw that despite it being called Inconsolata-g, the g
has remained the same. Instead I now use the packaged font that comes with
Espresso (Espresso Mono) (but I use it with Sublime Text, you can find the
font in the Espresso package) and it's treating me well so far.

Here's an example, you might not like the zero:
[http://i.imgur.com/QNpR2Og.png](http://i.imgur.com/QNpR2Og.png)

------
snogglethorpe
My current favorite monospaced/coding font is (or, was) "Cosmic Sans Neue
Mono"

It's apparently been renamed to "Fantasque Sans Mono", in part because it was
suffering from the name similarity to Comic Sans... (a shame, I thought that
was kind of funny :)

[https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-
sans](https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans)

[http://openfontlibrary.org/en/font/fantasque-sans-
mono](http://openfontlibrary.org/en/font/fantasque-sans-mono)

I find it nicely quirky/playful looking compared to the somewhat stolid
appearance of many monospaced fonts, while still being extremely readable and
practical... :]

------
noir_lord
Terminus at 16pt -
[http://i.imgur.com/cHk7yUE.png](http://i.imgur.com/cHk7yUE.png)

I spend my life in idea IDE's on Linux and thanks to the shonky font rendering
in swing apps on Linux the only two that I can standard are Deja Vu Sans Mono
(which is nice) and Terminus at 16pt which then looks like Terminus bitmapped.

~~~
hjst
You're probably already aware of this, but just in case: it's possible to
force Swing (and AWT) apps to use the system's font rendering with the
"swing.aatext" and "awt.useSystemAAFontSettings" respectively.

I have the following in my IDEA .desktop file:

export _JAVA_OPTIONS='-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on -Dswing.aatext=true' &&
idea.sh %u

This is the result:
[http://i.imgur.com/3V9Nf3k.png](http://i.imgur.com/3V9Nf3k.png)

~~~
noir_lord
Thanks and yes I've played with those settings.

While much better not quite right still and also I have some screens rotated
so I have hrgb and vrgb which looks fuzzy, I played with setting it to
gasp/lcd.

Using Terminus because it is a pixel perfect font with no aliasing means that
rotation etc just don't matter.

------
kremlin
The first thing I always, always look at when reviewing a new monospace font
for coding is I look at the 'l'.

The first time I googled monospace fonts, you see, to decide what I wanted to
use when I was setting up my first IDE (intelliJ, I think it was), I saw a
bunch of images of different fonts, and when I saw the 'l' of DejaVu Sans, my
jaw dropped. It was beautiful.

You have that similar style of l. Source Code Pro has it, as does Ubuntu Mono
and Menlo. It's that straight notch at the top with the curvy tail at the
bottom. I love it. It's kinda quirky but elegant at the same time.

I'm still using DejaVu because many of those other ones have the asterisk
symbol appearing too low for my taste.

I like your font. I see what someone else meant when they said it looks kinda
'fun'.

In your screenshot in the top left, I noticed the word 'int' looks a bit
wonky. the n and t are kinda leaning into each other, with the i leaning
outward. Character balance is a hard thing to achieve, I've read. Keep working
on it, it's a very lovely project.

~~~
kremlin
Found Menlo for Windows and gave it a shot. The "i" italic is way too slanty,
it looks weird with syntax highlighting.

Then I found Meslo, which is some guy's attempt to copy Menlo and make it
available for windows; this fixes my problem with Menlo, and also fixes my
only problem with DejaVu : the dotted zeroes as opposed to slashed zeroes.

Current monospace font recommendation: Meslo
[https://github.com/andreberg/Meslo-Font](https://github.com/andreberg/Meslo-
Font)

~~~
kremlin
screenshot of meslo in action in dark ide (pycharm)
[http://i.imgur.com/dSw8e2W.png](http://i.imgur.com/dSw8e2W.png)

------
maxharris
The site claims that it's 'crisp,' but the sample pngs are blurry on my Mac.

(Yes, I know why this is the case technically, but I don't need to get into
that to make my point.)

~~~
a_e_k
Macs ignore hinting when rendering antialiased. Try the prehinted version
(probably 72 or 144 DPI). It also works best with dark on light on the Mac due
to gamma.

Regarding PNGs, the samples are rendered with hRGB subpixel rendering. I don't
think Macs have ever used anything else, but that may be a possibility.
Hopefully its not just browser resizing.

~~~
Kronopath
The fact that light-on-dark text looks terrible on Macs isn't due to
gamma—it's due to the fact that subpixel rendering for light-on-dark text is
broken on Macs.

More info:
[http://www.lighterra.com/articles/macosxtextaabug/](http://www.lighterra.com/articles/macosxtextaabug/)

Generally I like Mac OS X's font rendering much better than Windows's, but
this is one aspect that drove me up the wall when I was redesigning my
personal website. (I wrote a bit about the issues I had with this bug in this
article: [http://kronopath.net/blog/dawn-of-a-new-
day/](http://kronopath.net/blog/dawn-of-a-new-day/). Search for "The bug".)

------
jkrems
The "i" seems to be positioned weirdly (not a font expert). What I mean is
that "int", "unsigned" and "Wizard" all look like the "i" is shifted slightly
to the left.

~~~
timdorr
That's commonly referred to as Kerning:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning)

I find that the biggest problem with the font as well. For a monospaced font,
it doesn't look all that monospaced. Many of the glyphs have odd positioning.
It gives the font a look of activity or "fun-ness" that doesn't match well
with it's intending purpose as a coding font.

~~~
marcoamorales
relevant: [http://xkcd.com/1015/](http://xkcd.com/1015/)

------
l33tfr4gg3r
My terminal font of choice in recent times is Hermit
([https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/](https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/)) - very readable
anti aliased font both in the terminal and within IDEs (on Linux). Somehow
doesn't render as well on Windows (but then again, who uses Windows for
serious work anyway ;)). I can't wait to try this out once I get my hands on
my personal workstation, since there's no such thing as too many programming
fonts.

------
techwizrd
Luculent looks interesting, but I still haven't found anything that beats
Ubuntu Mono on my machine. I think it's interesting that coding font
preferences differ based on operating system. Regardless of operating system,
the favorites I tend to see on threads like this are Ubuntu Mono, Dejavu Sans
Mono, Inconsolata, Consolas, Source Code Pro, and Monaco.

~~~
xiljin
I like to test drive new fonts whenever they pop up, but I always come back to
Ubuntu Mono! For anyone wanting to see/try it -

[http://font.ubuntu.com/](http://font.ubuntu.com/)

------
fournm
Definitely appreciate a new code font, even if this one doesn't so much look
like it'd meet my everyday use. It's a bit too "thin", for lack of a better
word, even if it does meet most of my requirements for distinguishing
characters/numbers quickly.

But oh man do I love how readable that is at 5x11 pixels. That's beautiful,
good work.

~~~
a_e_k
Thanks, glad you like the small sizes.

By "thin", do you mean narrow and condensed, or do you mean the weight of the
stems? For the former I wanted a decent amount of code to fit on a line -- I
tend not to like the expanded look of some fonts and prefer something a bit
more condensed. If you mean the weight, that's something of a design
constraint due to trying to keep it crisp at low resolutions by grid-fitting
to whole pixel boundaries.

~~~
fournm
I think it's the weight that's throwing me off--and yeah, I realized they were
probably linked after I said it.

------
arm
OS X user here. While I generally prefer Menlo¹ myself, I’ve found myself
predominantly using Everson Mono² simply because of the wide range of
characters it supports in Unicode’s BMP (and unbelievably, SMP as well!). I’m
pretty sure it contains glyphs for more Unicode codepoints than any other
monospaced font mentioned here. Not to mention that it was created by Michael
Everson³, who has made a sizeable number of contributions to the Unicode
Standard himself.

――――――

¹ —
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menlo_(typeface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menlo_\(typeface\))

² —
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everson_Mono](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everson_Mono)

³ —
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Everson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Everson)

------
brandonhsiao
Two quality fonts that I haven't seen mentioned here yet: Bitstream Vera Sans
Mono, Pragmata Pro.

~~~
wanda
Pragmata Pro has been my favourite for the last year or so, and was the first
font to truly displace fixed 6x13

... but recently I've been addicted to Cousine.

~~~
userbinator
I can still remember a time when monospace, aliased bitmap fonts were
preferred by the majority of coders, but it seems things have changed
especially in the past few years... but I still prefer the standard X fixed
fonts with their zeros slashed and find antialiased fonts more difficult to
focus on.

~~~
jowiar
> things have changed especially in the past few years

In one word: Retina.

------
seniorsassycat
Cool looking font, it reminds me of my handwriting style (especially the
italicised version). If the author is around, can you explain why you chose to
extend the brackets and parens below the base line of the other characters?

~~~
a_e_k
Thanks, and I'd be happy to explain. They extend from the bottom of the
descenders to the top of the ascenders. So if you look at something like:
[h][a][g], you'll see the 'a' is roughly centered and the top of the h and the
bottom of the g line up. So for things like foo() and class blah { ... }; the
o and semicolon are roughly centered vertically on the opening paren and
closing brace, respectively.

If you look at Consolas, for example, you'll see this is hardly unique.

~~~
stevenleeg
Interesting. Thanks for sharing this font! I've been trying it out for a bit
and really like its feel. Great work!

------
codequickly
This looks decent but not so great when using large sized fonts. I have yet to
find a better font for my terminal than NanumGothic
([http://dev.naver.com/projects/nanumfont/download](http://dev.naver.com/projects/nanumfont/download)).
It was created from a large Korean web company called Naver and I love the
horizontal spacing especially when using larger sized fonts (ie size 16 and
above since I like fonts large on terminal)

------
hoilogoi
Not unpleasant. The 'i' feels funny and I'm not sure about the curvy 'y'.
Maybe it's too similar to 'g'. But really not unpleasant.

------
ceeK
Looks good and I'm sure it'd appeal to a good chunk of people, but it's not
for me I don't think.

User feedback: for me a font is more than something that is easily read. I
value font's that, in some way, make it _fun_ to write. For example, the font
with iA Writer is almost addicting in the way it tempts me to write more. Of
course, however, you would want monospaced fonts for coding...

------
drvortex
Good work, though I largely prefer Source Code Pro (Medium). This is probably
the most well-done monospace font I've seen.

If you want to take a look see here :
[http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?event=d...](http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?event=displayFontPackage&code=1960)

------
mistaken
Do the ISO-8859-2 charset pretty please!

~~~
a_e_k
I certainly plan to keep expanding it. That one's on my list.

------
samatman
Always happy to try out a new monospace!

NB: In Mac Terminal, the box drawing characters don't connect. This is far
more common than not, the easiest-access font that does this correctly is
Monaco. I mention because the home page lists the box drawing characters as a
feature.

~~~
a_e_k
Interesting. I thought I'd tested that fairly recently, but I'll check that
again. Do you see the gaps vertically between lines or horizontally between
adjacent characters? (Or both?)

------
moron4hire
I'm all about the DejaVu Sans Mono: [http://dejavu-
fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page](http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page)

Best combination of readability and _massive_ selection of Unicode glyphs of
any fontface I've found.

------
teejmya
I want it on my iPad
[http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/1ztsah/requestfon...](http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/1ztsah/requestfont_luculent_a_family_of_scalable_vector/)

~~~
cormullion
There's an app for that:

[https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/anyfont/id821560738?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/anyfont/id821560738?mt=8)

------
Turing_Machine
Nice work. I'm in the middle of a big project so I don't want to take time to
get used to a new font right now, but will try it again when I have some
downtime.

N.B. I'm using Inconsolata right now, and have been for quite a few years.

------
userbinator
I stared at the example and something kept catching my attention but I didn't
know what it was until I compared it to my usual coding font (xterm6x13,
modded with slashed zero) - the zero is slashed backwards!

------
sergiosgc
Very nice. I'll stick with Proggy Clean but, as it is fixed size, and
displays' densities keep increasing, I'll have to ditch it some time. Luculent
is a prime contender for that spot.

------
eskil
Mensch, an older code/terminal font. [http://robey.lag.net/2010/06/21/mensch-
font.html](http://robey.lag.net/2010/06/21/mensch-font.html)

------
cm3
Any size larger than 10 is cut in the bottom of the glyphs when rendered in
plan9port's acme windows. 10 and 9 look correct. Happens with pre-hinted and
normal version.

------
stuaxo
This reminds me a bit of the programming books of old, where the paper was a
bit cheap - a similar colour to the background of this H/N page in fact.

------
ineedtosleep
Definitely agree with some of the other posts here: looks like something I
would use if I still played MUDs due to its playful feel.

------
be5invis
Are these characters exactly 1/2 em wide? For Chinese and Japanese users we
need them to mix with 漢字(which are 1em wide).

~~~
a_e_k
Not exactly. Their designed advance width is 1120 "font units". The TrueType
convention (which I followed) is 2048 font units per em. So they're close but
not quite 1/2 em wide.

However, many rasterizer round the widths to whole pixel sizes. Taking that
into account, I do see them coming out to exactly half the width at certain
sizes on this machine.

------
ramgorur
Like this font, reminds me of old soviet books, also the 'handwriting' effect
is neat. Please try to expand more.

------
sleepybrett
This font is too condensed and becomes unclear because of it.

------
cm3
Is there no good serif monospaced (preferably bitmap) font?

~~~
userbinator
I prefer the Xterm default Fixed fonts (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_(typeface)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_\(typeface\))
)

The IBM VGA font is a close second:
[http://i.imgur.com/XtzqR.png](http://i.imgur.com/XtzqR.png)

------
bennyg
Reminds me of the TwitchPlaysPokemon phenomenon lately.

------
cm3
Any chance of a PCF version?

------
pencilcheck
Pragmata Pro works for me

------
mantrax
God damn, that's an ugly one. Super-thin, and look at the lowercase "i" slant
backwards so much, it merges with the character before it, especially at small
sizes.

~~~
snogglethorpe
It's the "square/angular" look I don't like. I prefer a rounded font.

