
Input: Fonts for Code - tosh
http://input.fontbureau.com/preview/?size=14&language=python&theme=solarized-dark&family=InputSans&width=300&weight=300&line-height=1.2&a=0&g=0&i=0&l=0&zero=0&asterisk=0&braces=0&preset=default&customize=please
======
b3b0p
I'm a font-aholic and reading Hacker News, I get the impression I'm not the
only one.

My first adventure down the font hole started with Bit Stream Vera Sans Mono
followed by Source Code Pro. Stuck with Source Code Pro for many years and
even today, not sure any other aliased font looks and works as well as Source
Code Pro at almost every size, from the smallest onward. It just looks clean
to me.

After reading on here how great it was, switched to Fira Code for a while. It
was nice, but never blew me away. The ligatures were a nice change I guess.

Then I tried out Iosevka and was happy. Kept using it for a while.

Then it was Input Mono, again happy and used it for a while.

I was later introduced to Operator Mono and thought I had found code font
bliss (pay).

Ended up going back to SF Mono (I'm on macOS) and feel content. Finally.
Again. I don't think I'm switching anymore. I might try for a day or a few
minutes something else, but I can't see myself sticking with it like SF Mono.
It will have to blow my mind.

As an aside, I love no antialias Monaco at about 10 pt on hi dpi/retina
displays (MacBook Pro 2017 and LG 5k with non-decimal scale, e.g. 2x).
Something about it seems perfect to me. It usually seems to require special
configuration and sometimes is difficult or not supported at all in many tools
and editors, so I have stuck with SF Mono, typically 11 pt or 13 pt depending
on the display and time of day and how much sleep I got.

~~~
eps
> Operator Mono

That's one funky monospace, with almost Flintstones' feel to it.

[https://www.typography.com/fonts/operator/styles/](https://www.typography.com/fonts/operator/styles/)

~~~
twic
You may also enjoy Fantastique Sans, formerly known as Cosmic Sans, as it is
sort of programming version of Comic Sans:

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

~~~
thisacctforreal
Fantasque Sans Mono is my daily driver, I love it.

------
MarsAscendant
Yet to find something that suits me better than Fira Code. It's a decently
good-looking font with _ligatures_.

I'm a sucker for ligatures.

~~~
noir_lord
Iosevka for me, you can custom build it with the letter designs you want, it
supports ligatures and it's condensed without been cramped (also has Term,
non-term and Slab variants in the same build).

It's replaced my mono font _everywhere_ , Fira Code is lovely but it feels way
too wide once you've used Iosevka.

The only font that comes close is Pragmata Pro but that's not free.

[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/be5invis/Iosevka/master/im...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/be5invis/Iosevka/master/images/preview-
all.png)

~~~
cschmidt
I paid for the original Pragmata font in 2004, and he has kept sending updates
surprisingly often ever since. I suppose I upgraded to Pragmata Pro in 2011,
so only 8 years of updates on that. Money well spent for 40 hours a week of
use

[https://www.fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/](https://www.fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/)

~~~
noir_lord
I wasn't knocking Pragmata Pro and the dude has the right to charge for his
work.

That said for my needs Iosevka and Pragmata are pretty much a dead heat and
one is free and open.

If you prefer Pragmata then sure the the cost per hour over a decade is
irrelevant (the same reason I pay out of pocket for intellij ultimate at work,
work would pay for it but I use it outside of work and it's not worth the
hassle).

------
kleiba
To be honest, I never understood all these discussion about "coding fonts".
They pop up every now and then here on HN but it always seems like
bikeshedding to me.

Don't get me wrong - I'm aware that there are some folks who may have a vision
impairment or some other reason where it really matters. But apart from that,
I've been programming for decaded on many different computer systems with many
different fonts, and frankly, it really doesn't matter too much to me.

Of course, you want something monospace, and something that looks nice might
make an 8-hour day job (subconsciously?) more pleasant. But to me(!), most of
the "programmer font" discussions are a waste of time, just choose the first
one on your system and off you go.

~~~
iheartpotatoes
There are instances where font matters, and I go back to TurboC on my 8086 and
Fortran 'scards' on a VMS mainframe + terminal, so I'm not a whiny mod-crazy
hipster.

> Fonts Creating Bugs:

Some fonts are more prone to errors. Lower case L vs number one, zero vs.
capital O, braces vs parens, lowercase g vs 9. Go look at old Unix fixed
fonts, and even courier and you can see how hard it is to distinguish. (Unix
'10x7' was my favorite until horz resolutions crossed the 1600px.)

> Readabilty vs. Coding Style causing (literal) Headaches:

Staring at code 10+ hours a day, eyes fatigue. Some fonts are noisier than
others, some fonts read faster than others, some fonts have more space than
others.

And, if the coding style of the person you are reading does not use spaces
between '=' or '()', or ample newlines, Courier can be a very taxing font due
to all the serifs.

Lucida Mono provides a nice way out of this, but not all systems have it.
Consolas solved the problem for a very long time.

> Ligature Bling

The addition of ligatures is mostly bling. I tried Firas cuz the => glyphs
were nifty, but ultimately a big fat triple equals looks worse than '===' and
I'd rather not waste time tweaking my goddamn font!

> Proportional

What kind of savage codes with a proportional font?

> Portability

I switched to Consolas because I can use it on Vi on macOS, Win, and *nix, and
it saves my eyes from dense programming style.

~~~
stkdump
> What kind of savage codes with a proportional font?

I did for some time. I only switched back because our coding standard limits
the length of a line and that is hard to check with a proportional font.

I honestly don't get why source code needs a fixed character grid.

My prefered code formatting doesn't require lining up things using spaces in
the middle of the line. If things need to be lined up, then I put them in the
beginning of the line with the apropriate indentation. This way anyone can
choose any font they like and make use of the increased readability of
proportional fonts.

~~~
kakarot
I honestly don't get why source code needs a fixed character grid.

> Alignment of blocks and assignments. It's that simple.

The benefits from the increased legibility and clarity can be quite tangible.
Code that is the same looks the same, and it's easier to scan for anomalies.

------
jotaen
For those who are interested, I can recommend the talk “Cracking the Code”
given by the creator of Input, David Jonathan Ross, in which he talks about
coding font history and some amazing things you can do with them in modern
development environments:
[https://vimeo.com/166161405](https://vimeo.com/166161405)

------
jwr
Happy to see this here again. Input Mono has been my favorite programming font
for the last years. This is saying quite a bit, as I tend to be very picky and
regularly test other programming fonts.

There is nothing else that is as readable and comfortable to use in the long
term (my next-best font, and previous favorite, was Inconsolata).

~~~
fermienrico
I tried Input Mono and it looks and feels very "tall", taking up vertical
space. Obviously, I don't know whether this is just a optical illusion or
objectively true.

I've found SF Mono from Apple to be the best coding font. It has a beautiful
"r", slashed 0, l1 disambiguation and great rendering on MacOS. For Windows, I
used FontForge to increase hinting and create .ttf versions - I am pretty sure
this is violating Apple's TOS :-)

~~~
jwr
Hmm. That's strange. I find Input Mono to actually be a bit on the wide side,
and I often switch to Input Mono Narrow in order to fit more on the screen.
Now, Input Mono Narrow does feel "tall" (which is the point).

The nice thing is that you still have Condensed and Compressed if you want
things even tighter :-)

------
cygned
Recently found the Golang fonts. [https://blog.golang.org/go-
fonts](https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts)

Monospaced with serifs - totally blew my mind. I am using it since then and it
is the best font for me I have tried so far.

~~~
tyingq
Looks like the old SunOS console font.
[https://i.stack.imgur.com/g1qkf.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g1qkf.png)

------
tosh
I wish there was an agreed upon way to extend fonts with icons. For example I
found [https://github.com/ryanoasis/vim-
devicons](https://github.com/ryanoasis/vim-devicons) which adds icons to
Nerdtree (on the terminal) by leveraging nerdfonts
([https://nerdfonts.com](https://nerdfonts.com)).

There also is awesome-terminal-fonts
([https://github.com/gabrielelana/awesome-terminal-
fonts](https://github.com/gabrielelana/awesome-terminal-fonts)). I feel if
this was somehow standardized we would see much more vim and emacs plugins and
cli tools support icons in the terminal.

------
whalesalad
This is so cool. Really interesting how much visual noise is removed by
eliminating the hard baseline serif elements of letters like lowercase-L and
lowercase-I.

My favorite config (on a Retina 15" Macbook Pro):
[http://input.fontbureau.com/preview/?size=14&language=python...](http://input.fontbureau.com/preview/?size=14&language=python&theme=base16-dark&family=InputMono&width=300&weight=400&line-
height=1.4&a=ss&g=ss&i=serifs_round&l=serifs_round&zero=0&asterisk=height&braces=straight&preset=default&customize=please)

Might give it a spin. My current goto is Fira Code Retina @ 16pt.

------
Syzygies
I like lower case parentheses, for Scheme and Lisp coding. The ligatures in
Hasklig gave me this idea.

I'm currently using Courier Prime Code with 60% parentheses, vertically
centered around the lower case "o", and moved a bit left and right to open up
expressions, and for better spacing trailing )))'s after a letter. This is
easily accomplished using the demo version of Glyphs Mini, and it puts focus
back on the text, without interfering with tools that expect parentheses. (I
used a preprocessor for years that inferred most parentheses. It can be done,
but then standard editor tools for Lisp don't work.)

There are deep reasons one might prefer Scheme to Common Lisp, particularly as
a mathematician. Not liking Common Lisp's default "GET OFF MY GRASS" upper
case is a shallow reason. Call me shallow. It was a revelation to realize that
I didn't like Lisp parentheses because they were also upper case, and they
should also be lower case.

~~~
makesthingspos
Can you share a screenshot of lisp code with your font?

Can you share the font?

Thanks.

------
orev
Been using Deja Vu for such a long time, hard to change. Seeing as this has a
slashed or dotted zero really makes this a contender. So many “code” fonts
don’t seem to get the zero right.

~~~
synthmeat
I'm a Deja Vu guy myself, but something (I think yesterday) here had me
actually considering switch.

[https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts](https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts)

Same metrics as Deja Vu, but with serifs! Shame coverage is so low.

~~~
eponeponepon
It's the Unicode coverage that keeps me with DJV Mono - working a lot with
document-focused XML, the fewer little white boxes turn up in my editor the
better. DJV Sans ended up leaking into my desktop over the years and now I
can't imagine going without it.

------
eps
It's again a good time to plug the best programming font, the open secret to
many - Dina:

[https://www.dcmembers.com/jibsen/download/61/](https://www.dcmembers.com/jibsen/download/61/)

Including its two TTF versions (which are separately notable for using obscure
TTF fearure to achieve a proper pixelated look):

[http://chrisrickard.blogspot.com/2010/05/geenatcom-dina-
ttf....](http://chrisrickard.blogspot.com/2010/05/geenatcom-dina-ttf.html)

[http://www.geenat.com/?p=66](http://www.geenat.com/?p=66)

~~~
moyya
Dina looks great in those images -- but at 10pt on my 1440p monitor in VS Code
(Win10), it's basically unusable. And I have excellent vision.

~~~
eps
One of the TTF versions scales up, Mr. FancyPants :)

~~~
moyya
The first TTF link doesn't display anything on my machine (no characters
display in the font install dialogs). Second version looks pretty rough scaled
up imo.

------
sgustard
This link provides a better overview of the font:

[http://input.fontbureau.com/info/](http://input.fontbureau.com/info/)

------
happyvalley
I switched to this font about a year ago. Input Mono is really readable and
has great proportions.

The new Output font (yes, that’s the name) of Input‘s creator David Jonathan
Ross looks great as well! Very clean sans-serif font.

------
skemper911
Inconsolata ticks all the boxes for me

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconsolata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconsolata)

~~~
yellowbuilding
Same.

Whenever evaluating a programming font, it’s really just a question of how
similar to Inconsolata it is.

------
Osiris
I've been using Input for years. Specifically, I've been using Input Sans
Compressed. Yes, it's a proportional font. I've gotten so used to it that
monospaced fonts feel like there's just way too much whitespace.

------
lioeters
Here's a page where you can compare programming fonts, including Input:
[http://app.programmingfonts.org](http://app.programmingfonts.org)

It's a time sink, but quite useful.

------
PhasmaFelis
If you like crisp bitmap fonts, I recommend the Proggy line.
[http://upperbounds.net/](http://upperbounds.net/) It's fantastic if you like
small point sizes; Proggy Tiny is 6x9 pixels per character, and lets you jam
an amazing amount of text on one screen and stay crisp and clear.

I've moved away from them as I get older and my vision recedes, but when I was
younger nothing compared.

------
nielsbot
Controversial: I use Input Sans as my coding font. Yes, it's a proportional
font (designed for code).

Using a monospaced font feels like a robotic concession to the ancient ways...
Doing my small part to bring about the human-friendly future of coding I dream
about.

------
K2L8M11N2
I use the GNU Unifont, it's a bitmap font with the added bonus of supporting
all Basic Multilingual Plane characters.

[http://unifoundry.com/unifont/index.html](http://unifoundry.com/unifont/index.html)

~~~
samatman
For those of you who might find Unifont, er, hideous (as I do), it’s worth
knowing about Google’s Noto.

Noto is short for “no tofu”, the typographer’s name for the box which is
displayed when the system can’t find a glyph for a codepoint.

It’s a decent backing font and guarantees you’ll see something rather than
nothing.

------
justwalt
I really like Overpass Mono. It's quite easy to read and I think it looks nice
as well:

[https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Overpass+Mono](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Overpass+Mono)

~~~
cben
Note that Red Hat had this designed for styling large headings (similar to the
font used on highway signs), not for reading code.

[https://github.com/RedHatBrand/Overpass](https://github.com/RedHatBrand/Overpass)
[https://overpassfont.org](https://overpassfont.org)

Hmm, nice selection of math operators! If I ever need to put math formulas on
highway signs... But I don't want to get people killed, and anyway TeX would
have better spacing ;-)

------
ilovecaching
I'm a font-aholic as well, but I specifically look for fonts that remind me of
the early days of computing. I really like IBM Plex Plex Mono and Golang's
monospaced serif font. I also found vt52 from back in the PDP days.

Another interesting font is B612 Mono, which is the font used on aircraft to
help pilots easily distinguish characters on their HUDs. I used it as a
programming font, and I think it's quite legible.

------
platz
Iosevka and Bitstream Vera have been my go-to's

------
dang
Quite a few previous discussions at
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=fontbureau.com%20points%3E30&s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=fontbureau.com%20points%3E30&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0).

------
SomeHacker44
Font selection is so personal and subjective, so really go with whatever you
find suits your taste.

For me, it's Source Code Pro.

~~~
gattr
Agreed on the subjectivity. At home (on a 24" 4K monitor) I use Consolas (18
points), at work (on 24" FullHD) I like Ubuntu Mono.

------
mike986
For fixed-width serif font, I like bloomberg terminal serif font. It's the
same family as Georgia but fixed spaced.

[https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-
ecd90601a357e090eadf2d...](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-
ecd90601a357e090eadf2daf2e0ff7ac)

------
_emacsomancer_
I really like the curly braces in Input. I'm not too thrilled about the
licence though. And I've used DejaVu Sans Mono for too long for anything else
to look right to me, I think, and the DejaVu fonts have such great glyph
coverage as well.

------
zzo38computer
I use "Fixed". It is a pretty good fixpitch font for display on screen, in my
opinion. I personally prefer it over all of the others that have been
suggested. No antialiasing, no TrueType, just a pure bitmap font with nothing
extra.

------
mroche
This is a very nice looking font, I may have to try it out. I’ve pretty much
stuck to Roboto Mono (with powerline for shell and ligature symbols [on/off]
for editors) the last few years. I personally find it readable.

~~~
mroche
Just gave it a whirl, purely default Mono settings. Did not feel right. I
agree with the sentiments of the curly braces feeling too curly. Maybe after a
longer adjustment period it'd be fine, but compared to my years of Roboto
Mono, it feels squat.

Also just gave IBM Plex a spin and it too doesn't feel natural. To me Roboto
Mono just feels clean, almost clinically precise.

------
zoeysaurusrex
I’m such a sucker for beautiful typefaces. I’m going to try this one out. I
recently switched from Fira Code to Source Code Pro, but I don’t like it quite
as much. This looks pretty

------
aldanor
I can't find anything better than Monaco for myself. That's something about it
aesthetically pleasing which I can't quite explain. Fira Code probably comes
second.

~~~
ComputerGuru
What about SF Mono? I liked it enough to port it to Windows.

~~~
fermienrico
I second SF Mono, subjectively it is the most aesthetically pleasing, well
proportioned and just plain beautiful to look at.

With that, the entire San Francisco type family is extremely well crafted. I
just wish it was openly available even for a fee. But, that makes it even more
irresistible and valuable for Apple.

~~~
frou_dh
Isn't it so... exclusive... that you have to dig the file out of the
_Xcode.app_ or _Terminal.app_ bundle to be able to use it in other
applications, even on macOS?

------
Jaruzel
I'm currently using Droid Sans Mono for coding. With a small hack to add a
slash through the Zeros. For me it's finally the best coding font I've used.

------
mikewhy
I love this font for programming. Topped only by SF Mono, IMO.

------
benfrain
Dank Mono. Ligatures, crossed zero and crazy italics for comments and the
like: [https://dank.sh](https://dank.sh)

~~~
edoceo
The lower italic 's' is crazy.

------
llIIllIIllIIl
Used them for a couple years already. Input Mono Condensed!

~~~
Digital-Citizen
If the Input Mono Condensed you're referring to comes from
[https://djr.com/input/](https://djr.com/input/) I recommend reviewing that
font's license.

[https://djr.com/license/](https://djr.com/license/) is a non-free license
(the license does not respect your software freedoms to run, copy, share, and
modify the software). The license is revocable under unclear and incompletely
specified conditions: This license can be terminated at any time for no
declared reason "without the obligation of notice or opportunity to cure [a
breach of any term of this agreement]". The license tries to place limits that
could go beyond what power copyright law grants in Massachusetts, USA (the
region the license will be interpreted within). In other words, copyright law
in your region may grant you more rights than the state of Massachusetts, USA
grants.

~~~
Svenstaro
So? What's the worst that could happen and how do you even imagine a practical
CnD would take place? Somebody spots you using the font at a convention and
decides to change the license then and there?

It's not like you can't easily change your font if you're ever required to.

------
gweinberg
As long as I can easily tell a lower case el from an upper case eye (is that
how you spell the letter?) I'm reasonably happy with the font for coding.

------
nijaru
Originally learned about this font from here a few years back. The font is
customizable as either serif, sans, or monospaced along with a, g, i, l, 0,
etc.

------
danlugo92
Ive been happy with operator mono for React development.

------
timothevs
I LOVE Input. In fact, I have been using it since 2014. It quickly replaced
Pragmata Pro for me when it came out. And it is free. Awesome.

------
txtsd
I've been using Input at 6pt for a couple of years. Nothing else looks good at
that size.

------
cfv
Hi! Dooes this support ligatures? I've come to depend heavily on them for some
reason.

~~~
SZJX
Apparently not from the replies and the author doesn't seem to be interested.
Pragmata Pro is still the best IMO.

------
fortyseven
Going to take a lot to pry Ubuntu Mono from my hands, but I'm game for giving
it a shot.

~~~
iambvk
+1 for Ubuntu Mono. IMO it has just enough styling that rest all feel like,
too dull or trying too smart or plainly inconsistent.

------
anhthang
Nice fonts for Code

