
Programming Fonts – Test Drive - ChrisGranger
http://app.programmingfonts.org/
======
hnarn
It drives me crazy when fonts look at the old convention of "strike through
zero" and for some reason decides they need to be different from the
convention and allow the strike to pass the edges of the zero circle.
"Anka/Coder" in the linked article is guilty of this.

When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero, it's a
Danish or Norwegian "Ö" (Ø). It's been a part of their alphabet for centuries.

The whole purpose of the "strike through zero" is to stop it from being mixed
up with Omega. By badly thought out design and a need to be different for no
reason, you just returned to square one, because the font is now unreadable
for anyone that knows or works with the letter Ø.

~~~
cr0sh
So you're reading a number and then -blurp- your mind goes "Danish" or
"Norwegian" letter?

Context doesn't come into play?

I mean - I can understand such confusion if you are dealing with some kind of
multi-character random code or such (ie - a "confirmation code" for instance),
and the site is primarily targeted to Danish or Norwegian users; in that case,
the confusion would be valid.

Much like such codes in "English" (maybe "Latin" might be a better
description?), without having a distinguishing mark for the zero, and
depending on the font used - where a zero can look like a capital letter "O".
Was that "0" or "O"? That can be an issue, depending on the language of the
users, etc.

But aside from those particular cases, which aren't very frequent, most of the
time you can infer what is meant by what, based on the context of the
surrounding characters and the information that is likely being conveyed.

I'm not sure one should get too upset by such a minor thing...?

~~~
red_admiral
> So you're reading a number and then -blurp- your mind goes "Danish" or
> "Norwegian" letter?

Yes.

Once you become really fluent in a different script, I find that misuse of it
starts to become really annoying.

Before I had any proficiency in a language using the Cyrillic alphabet, if
someone replaced say an A with a De (Д) or a W with a Sha (Ш) in an English
text, I'd have no trouble reading it. Now, this kind of thing always trips me
up and I've heard from several native speakers that they absolutely hate this
kind of thing. To the people doing this to lyrics of metal songs in
particular: please stop.

If I had to have a guess at why, I'd say if you are fluent in English but not
a Cyrillic language, then your "System 1" autocorrects such mistakes to the
the closest English word without you noticing. Once the other letters start to
mean something, you consciously notice the mistakes as such. (For an example
of the mental "autocorrect", did you notice the repeated "the" above? h/t
Scott Alexander.)

Same idea with that game where you have words written in different colours but
you have to read the colour instead of the word, so if "blue" is written in
green you have to read "green". It's incredibly annoying in a language that
you know, but really easy in a script/language that you don't know.

~~~
amyjess
Or for that matter, Greek.

It absolutely drives me up the wall when I see uppercase lambdas used for A.

For example, the car company Kia styles their name KIΛ, which makes me think
"Kil". Or the monitor company AOC writing it ΛOC.

And recently I've been watching an anime called _Aldnoah.Zero_ , which
stylizes its name as ΛLDNOΛH.ZERO. That one is particularly aggravating
because the lambda is right next to an L!

~~~
Asooka
ΛOC is the worst for me in Cyrillic, because that is a real word and it means
elk.

------
me551ah
I'm surprised that the list doesn't mention consolas. It ships default with
visual studio and it's so good that I use it on arch Linux as my terminal font
and with intellij. It was designed with programming in mind and has some nifty
characteristics like a slash through zero. This list also misses out on
'operator mono' which is a well thought out font for programming.

~~~
klageveen
Hi, I'm the author of programmingfonts.org. Operator Mono certainly is pretty.
I always loved consolas on Windows (honestly, it's the only thing that
rendered properly on Win7). That said, I can only include fonts that are
freely available, or where the owner of the font allows me to (in the case of
Input Mono). I have tried for a few others, but haven't been so lucky there.
So, no proprietary or otherwise commercial fonts. I do try to feature them on
the blog though.

~~~
Asooka
Can't you have a "system fonts" section that uses the fonts already installed,
so people can compare if they are running the respective OS?

~~~
klageveen
Well, there is no way to get a list of installed fonts via the browser, but I
have thought about adding an input so you can try installed fonts. I just
don't have enough time to tackle all the ideas I have!

------
cpeterso
I'd like to see an elimination tournament of these so you can two fonts head-
to-head and vote for your preferred until you discover you favorite.

Identifont is a similar system. It uses a twenty-questions style format to
identify an unknown font.

[http://www.identifont.com/](http://www.identifont.com/)

~~~
klageveen
That's a really cool idea. You know, the website is on GitHub, if anyone wants
to contribute a PR I'm all ears ;)

~~~
rbanffy
We all know 3270 will win ;-)

------
blunte
Great site, but one request: Please make the up/down keyboard arrows switch to
the prev/next font (rather than just scrolling the list of fonts). That way I
could keep my eyes on the code window to really feel the change.

Currently, having to visually bounce from code window to font selection window
and back slows me down and makes it harder for me to compare fonts.

~~~
jay_kyburz
I think it would also be good to mark them as you look down the list, then
filter the list and work down it again, marking more until you are left with
just one.

~~~
tripzilch
Yes, something this would be very useful for actually comparing the fonts.
Google Web Fonts has something similar, you can select a bunch of fonts from
the long list, that you like from first glances, and then compare only that
selection with sample texts.

For this list of programming fonts, I could first select (mark) a bunch that
just match my general taste (shape, weight, x-height). Then I would be able to
easily switch between my selection/shortlist to inspect more detailed
differences such as how numbers are aligned with respect to brackets and
operators, or whatever.

Currently it's a bit hard to do if you have to keep a mental shortlist of
fonts you like enough for further inspection, to remember which ones to check
back on (especially if you see some names for the first time).

Regardless, it's a really cool site, great resource, and already the comparing
mechanism is pretty nice!

------
Jerry2
One of my favorites is PragmataPro [0] (with powerline glyphs) and I'm sad
it's not there. I guess they can't use proprietary fonts. PragmataPro was so
weird when I started using it but it has grown on me and now I have a hard
time switching to a terminal that uses something else.

In any case, if you're like me and you look at the terminal screen for hours
on end every single day, find some font that won't tire your eyes and is
optimized for your screen. If you have to squint or double-check letters or
numbers because they're unclear, increase the size or switch to a different
font.

[0]
[https://www.fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/](https://www.fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/)

~~~
gnulinux
Huh. Not to sound cheap, but it really seems unnecessary to me to spend 60 Eur
for a font, when I already have _really_ good fonts like Inconsolata in my
reach for free. Is font really that important, do you think? This is an honest
question, please don't think I'm sarcastic.

~~~
Jerry2
That's an average price of a AAA game, right? And what kind of utility do you
get from that?

Just did a quick check... I bought it in Sept of 2012, 2323 days ago.

$70 / (2323 day * 6 hrs/day) = $0.005/hr

Did I get my money's worth (and mind you, I paid less than that.. I'm just
going by today's prices)? I think I did. It all depends on how you value
things.

~~~
darkcha0s
Except that most expensive AAA games don't have free counterparts...

~~~
LocalH
Not all fonts have free counterparts. “Serif” and “sans serif” don’t always
mean fungible.

------
colordrops
I really enjoy the Nerd Font pack, as it adds all kinds of symbols that are
great for augmenting text editors like Vim:

[https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts](https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-
fonts)

Then your editor can look like this:

[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/ryanoasis/vim-
devicon...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/ryanoasis/vim-
devicons/screenshots/v0.10.x/overall-screenshot.png)

It's not all just for looks. For example you get icons for file types so it's
also useful. My favorite is the Nerd Font version of Droid Sans Mono.

~~~
h1d
Works on terminal with patched 'exa' as a replacement of 'ls' too.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17883833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17883833)

------
shmerl
I've been using DejaVu Sans Mono for quite some time. It's a nice font. It
used to be the default monospace font in KDE, until they switched to Noto
Mono. Autohinting setting for fontconfig makes it look better for me:

    
    
        <!-- Making DejaVu Sans Mono more slim -->
        <match target="font">
          <test name="family">
            <string>DejaVu Sans Mono</string>
          </test>
          <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">
            <bool>true</bool>
          </edit>
        </match>

~~~
simias
I'm in the same boat, every time one of these threads pop up I try a few
different fonts recommended here but I always end up going back to DejaVu. It
think it looks pretty good, it has good Unicode coverage, it's supported out
of the box on most distros...

It's weird because I can be pretty snobbish and opinionated with a lot of
programming-related stuff (I use a very expensive keyboard, a large 4k screen,
a heavily customized editor and window manager etc...) but when it comes to
fonts I really have a hard time finding a real improvement with some of the
very expensive fonts people are recommending in this thread compared to good
old DevaVu.

I would be very interested to read an article that would explain in details
what makes certain fonts better or worse than others, especially for
programming.

~~~
platz
I switched from using devavu for years finally to iosevka

~~~
shittyadmin
Had a look at iosevka - it definitely seems nicer than many of the others, but
it still feels too vertical when compared to DejaVu in my opinion. Is there
something that sold you on it?

~~~
platz
Well, it certainly is more vertical. The increased x-height allows it to be
readable at small sizes (and fit more horizontally) which looks great in the
terminal and editor, but maybe a bit odd on the test page.

~~~
shittyadmin
Well, a week later and I think I'm a convert. I didn't like the look at first,
but after using it in my IDE and actually typing with it, it's quite nice.

Thanks.

------
chrismorgan
My favourite for a few years now is a commercial font, Triplicate. It’s a true
serif monospace font; every other monospace font I’ve encountered that is
labelled “serif” is actually a slab serif. It has a proper italic face as
well, which is a less rare, but it’s a _functional_ italic face rather than
ornamental.

It comes with some interesting variants, most notably Poly which is not fully
monospaced, adjusting the widths of characters like i to be a little narrower,
and W to be a little wider. I like to use that for code display.

[https://practicaltypography.com/triplicate.html](https://practicaltypography.com/triplicate.html)

~~~
1kGarand
It looks quite similar to golang font: [https://blog.golang.org/go-
fonts](https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts)

It has serifs and true italics. Might be an interesting free alternative.

~~~
chrismorgan
Ah yes, I had forgotten about that one—it’s definitely the closest font I’ve
found to Triplicate, and its serif style is partially slab and partially true
serif (to a similar degree to Triplicate, really).

~~~
chrismorgan
Oh yeah, I forgot to address the other point: Go Mono doesn’t really have true
italics. One or two of its letter forms are adjusted (double decker a to
single decker _a_ ), but apart from that it’s just sloped roman. Look at the
Triplicate specimens to see the difference, if you want. The whole shape of
the character changes.

------
daxterspeed
I think a lot of these fonts deserve a little blurb about their history and
purpose. For example Liberation Mono (version 2+) and Cousine are
fundamentally the same font available under the same SIL Open Font License
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts#Distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts#Distribution)

Personally I use and recommend Liberation Mono / Cousine at 9pt / 12px. I've
been using this font for years so it's just ended up what I'm the most
comfortable with for both reading and writing.

~~~
klageveen
That's a good point. I usually have a little blurb like that on the blog, but
I have been trying to integrate more info about each font into the test drive
thing. There are lot's of "family relations" like that between fonts.

------
mshenfield
I loved traipsing through the different fonts to see what they did. I
discovered some font-features I wasn't aware of:

* bitmapped + ligatured fonts - you can have both!

* sans-serif normal, serif italics - Italicized words were serif-ed. "Latin Modern Mono" is an example. Also, Donald Knuth made that font - did you know Donald Knuth made a font?

Really cool work, thanks for making this.

~~~
klageveen
Awesome feedback, thanks!

------
Stratoscope
It looks like these are all monospaced fonts.

I realize that most programmers use monospaced fonts, but I personally find
proportional fonts to be much more readable and pleasing to my eye. I would be
really interested in a similar font comparison that included proportional
fonts that are suitable for programming.

Right now my favorite is Trebuchet MS. This renders beautifully on the high-
DPI displays I use, and it has easily-distinguished glyphs for the common
mistakables like Il|. Its tilde is not very good though, so I used a font
editor to swap in a better one.

But I'm always interested to hear about other options!

When I do have to use a monospaced font (e.g. in a terminal window),
Liberation Mono is my favorite. Definitely worth a look if you like monospaced
fonts.

~~~
valtism
I'm curious to know how you started using proportional fonts for coding. All
of the tooling for writing code defaults to monospace, so what started you
coding in a different style?

~~~
int_19h
One of the early proponents of using proportional fonts for code was Bjarne
Stroustroup - his "The C++ Programming Language" books all do that, and he
briefly explains it in the intro as being more readable, and urges the readers
to give it a go. I wasn't convinced, personally, but the idea was already
around then.

~~~
teddyh
The Smalltalk system also used proportional fonts, and predates that book by
many years.

~~~
int_19h
The first edition of the C++ book was in 1985, so that is roughly the same
timeframe as Smalltalk-80 getting popular.

------
interlocutor
No one has mentioned Lucida Sans Typewriter. It was the default console font
on Solaris, and it was may favorite code font for more than a decade. I even
made a Windows version of that font, for my own use, using a bitmapped font
editor. Here's a screenshot of Solaris showing that font:
[http://agilo.acjs.net/files/screenshot_solaris.png](http://agilo.acjs.net/files/screenshot_solaris.png)
You can buy it from Adobe: [https://www.fonts.com/font/adobe/lucida-sans-
typewriter/regu...](https://www.fonts.com/font/adobe/lucida-sans-
typewriter/regular)

~~~
signal11
Ah, I mentioned it a little while ago in another comment thread. Microsoft
bundled it with older versions of Office and Windows, and is included in their
TrueType Font Pack[1]

[1] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-
list/lucida...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/lucida-
sans-typewriter)

~~~
dumol
Also in the JRE downloads at
[https://www.java.com/download/](https://www.java.com/download/) in the
lib/fonts sub-dir since forever.

------
mortenjorck
Something not in the list that would make a good addition is iA’s (makers of
the popular iA Writer app) fork of IBM Plex Mono. They took Plex and
redesigned some of the more quirky, IBM-brand glyphs such as loosening the
tight radii on the descenders of ’t’ and ‘j’, and built some fairly novel
duospace and quad-space versions: [https://ia.net/writer/blog/a-typographic-
christmas](https://ia.net/writer/blog/a-typographic-christmas)

The GitHub link is somewhat buried in the post: [https://github.com/iaolo/iA-
Fonts](https://github.com/iaolo/iA-Fonts)

------
TomasSedovic
This is a really cool site, thanks!

It also helped me understand something about the font sizes that always
puzzled me (but never enough to actually look it up).

All of the fonts there have the size of 16, but some are clearly bigger than
others. Compare e.g. Inconsolata and Meslo:

[http://app.programmingfonts.org/#inconsolata](http://app.programmingfonts.org/#inconsolata)
[http://app.programmingfonts.org/#meslo](http://app.programmingfonts.org/#meslo)

Having them side by side, you can see that they contain the same vertical
amount of space. Inconsolata's glyphs are smaller, but they're still in the
box of the same height.

It does seem that the "font size" only refers to the height, though. The width
is clearly variable.

To anyone who actually understands this properly: is the above correct or is
that just an artefact of how the website renders the text?

~~~
klageveen
A font’s dimensions at a given “font-size” are actually completely up to the
designer. Something like x-height can only be determined by rendering and then
measuring. Editors tend to be full of character measuring code. x-height also
doesn’t say anything about the length of descenders and ascenders. Some fonts
are exactly the same size though, there a bunch of variations of Courier to be
used as a replacement (for licensing reasons). If they’re not designed to the
same dimensions you cannot be sure text will fit on the page with the other
font. And if they’re the same size they can still look larger or smaller by a
wide margin. It’s a wonderful world :)

------
thesimp
I use a very simple test to verify if fonts are usable in programmer/technical
environments:

\- check the readability of lower and upper case "i" (india) against the
number "1" (one)and the lower and upper case "l" (lima).

\- Check the readability of the lower and upper case "o" (oscar) against the
number "0".

\- check if the font can be used monospaced with being reasonable to good
readability.

If it passes those checks then it is often good enough for me.

~~~
Syzygies
\- how much code can one fit on a screen, still maximum legibiilty?

\- Is there a lighter weight variant from which one can steal ()[]{} ?
Essential for Lisp programming, nice for every language.

My current winner is Roboto Mono Regular, with brackets borrowed from Roboto
Mono Light. The font disappears on me (attitude takes bandwidth) and one would
never know I played with the brackets till one goes back to another font, and
it becomes obvious brackets on a Retina display have no business having the
same weight as body text.

Sample ('Zoom Out' for realistic scale):
[https://www.math.columbia.edu/~bayer/etc/RobotoLisp.png](https://www.math.columbia.edu/~bayer/etc/RobotoLisp.png)

~~~
mthoms
Very interesting. I've never heard of this idea of making some specific glyphs
thinner, but it makes perfect sense. I'm curious, is this something you
discovered on your own?

I'm definitely going to try this out.

------
dspillett
A handy list and preview.

It might be nice to include some detail as to the features provided by some of
the fonts on the font list, if it can be done without making the UI too busy.

I'm thinking indicators for things like: true italic provided (instead of
leaving the OS to use false italics), true bold provided, programming
ligatures (as seen in those like Fira Code), ... Perhaps filters too.

~~~
toyg
Ligatures could probably be simply shown by adding one or two of the most
common ones ( <=, != etc...)

~~~
gjm11
Maybe it's changed in the last hour or two, but for me it _does_ indicate when
ligatures are present -- in the list on the lest, under the name of each font
there's a line giving name, date, and some features -- one of which is
"ligatures".

~~~
klageveen
Fonts with ligatures are indicated as such, but I’ve yet to add all the other
metadata. I do have the data, just need ideas on how to surface it in the UI
with too much clutter. I also have to add search, keyboard navigation, etc.
I’ll probably have things to do here well beyond retirement ;)

------
huy-nguyen
I’ll put in a mention for Dank Mono. I’ve been using it for a year and love it
([https://dank.sh](https://dank.sh)). It’s like Operator Mono but much
cheaper.

~~~
jgalentine007
This is what I've been using the last year as well. At first I felt silly
paying for a font but I really like it - having cursive fonts in VsCode does
seem to help with my comprehension and breaks up the monotony a bit.

------
keithnz
I quite like IBM Plex Mono as a programming font...
[https://github.com/IBM/plex](https://github.com/IBM/plex) would be nice if
the page has a way of making suggestions of fonts to add.

~~~
hashtekar
Agree. It does seem to be in the repo though. You could submit a pull request
for additions I suppose.

~~~
hashtekar
Oh, it's not in the to. My bad.

------
heyjudy
I've tried dozens.

Monaco or Source Code Pro

You also have to try them in your terminal or editor, because on the web isn't
the same experience.

~~~
Jaruzel
Browsers tend to use their own inbuilt font rendering code, which can be
different from the OS. I know for a fact that some of the fonts shown at
app.programmingfonts.org do _not_ render that well inside apps on Windows 10.

------
me_bx
Reporting a bug here as I see that the author is around:

For some reason, switching fonts does not work on my browser.

Firefox 64.0.2, windows 10 64 bits

No error message in the console, and ublock origin plugin didn't block
anything on the page.

Opening the same page in Google Chrome worked well: font changes in the demo
code whenever user clicks on a font in the list.

~~~
strainer
Likely this setting has been disabled: View > Preferences > Language &
Appearance > Advanced > Allow pages to choose their own fonts...

~~~
me_bx
Turns out it was something like this.

The `Allow pages to choose their own fonts` option was enabled. However, a
customization in my userContent.css prevented the font changes to be applied:

    
    
        pre {
            font-family: "DejaVu Sans Mono" !important;
        }
    

Starting Firefox with a new profile showed that the site works correctly.

------
rypskar
I am fascinated of how important font is for some, I tend to stick with the
default font and not think about it. The only time I have really noticed a
font is libre font (or what its name was) after installing LibreOffice, I did
uninstall LibreOffice and bought MS Office instead because of that font

~~~
ethelward
So instead of just chosing another font for the default style, you decided to
thrash LO and buy MS Office?

That seems a bit of an overreaction, no?

~~~
rypskar
The font was a big part of the reason. Maybe having a font where the spacing
between some letters looks like a space between words say a bit about how the
UX is prioritized. The money difference between LO and MS Office isn't much
when you don't upgrade every year

------
ChrisGranger
I like opening multiple tabs with different fonts and switching back and forth
to make the differences more obvious.

I've been experimenting with a variety of fonts in Sublime Text 3 on Linux,
and I keep coming back to the default, which is apparently called emilbuS
Mono, and looks like Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.

~~~
evanrelf
emilbuS <=> Sublime :)

------
rcarmo
I pretty much standardized on Fira Code over the past few years, although the
ligatures seem to delay rendering a bit.

But overall I like that lowercase letters have nice, readable descenders and
hints on HIDPI displays, and that my editor now looks exactly the same on
Windows and Mac.

------
angst
Fira Mono link seems to be no longer served(redirects to general style guides
page). Maybe you could link
[https://github.com/mozilla/Fira](https://github.com/mozilla/Fira) instead?

~~~
decasteve
I believe this is a more recently updated link:
[https://github.com/bBoxType/FiraSans/](https://github.com/bBoxType/FiraSans/)

~~~
klageveen
Good catch, I'll update the link. Both the Mozilla and the foundry's repo seem
to have the same font, it kinda makes sense to link to the Mozilla one in this
case.

------
Hackbraten
Slightly OT: Iosevka Term Light is my favorite font for the terminal. It looks
pretty on a HiDPI screen. Also, it’s the only font that wouldn’t break box-
drawing Unicode glyphs for me, e. g. those used by the tree command.

------
0xBA5ED
I like the 'M+' fonts for C++ code. Nice and compact to allow more characters
to fit comfortably on a line.

------
shurcooL
I’m glad that Go Mono made the cut. I’ve been using it happily for a while,
despite it being an underdog font.

------
opk
It'd be good to have details of unicode coverage on this site, i.e how many
glyphs in various major blocks are covered (e.g greek, cyrillic, box drawing,
mathematical symbols etc).

~~~
klageveen
The problem here is that the information isn’t always available. If the docs
don’t mention box drawing characters, or powerline symbols the font may still
have them. Also, a lot of sources mention the number of glyphs but not the
Unicode ranges that are covered.

------
Topolomancer
This is interesting, but I would like a more 'guided' tour, maybe backed up by
some usage data, as well as some statistics about readability and so on.

~~~
Stratoscope
Now that is an interesting perspective!

It's hard for me to imagine that I would choose a font based on usage data and
statistics: "25% more coders use Inconsolata than Verdana, and they suffer 3%
less eyestrain as a result."

How would you even measure such a thing? A font that works well on a low-DPI
display may not be the same one that looks great on a high-DPI display. And
one person's eyes are not my eyes.

I look at a font, try using it in my work, and either I like or I don't like
it. Even if I do like it, I will probably find some flaws in it and fix them
in a font editor. Or maybe I don't and just live with it.

I always enjoy comparing notes with people about what fonts we like to use.
But this seems like personal preference, not science.

------
miguelmota
This is awesome. Note to site owner; I'm getting "Mixed Content" warnings
because some scripts are served over HTTP instead of HTTPS.

~~~
klageveen
Thanks! It's on my list to actually get https set up for it because originally
GitHub pages didn't support that.

------
coleifer
I put together a list of my own, including screenshots with a small code
snippet. Might be helpful as this list does include some that are not listed
on programmingfonts.org: [http://charlesleifer.com/blog/monospace-font-
favorites/](http://charlesleifer.com/blog/monospace-font-favorites/)

------
boterock
I recently found a font named "NSimSun" when customizing the windows console,
and I am currently using it for programming. It looks like a serif font but it
has finer details like a non-monospace font. I think it is because it was made
for asian text, and each latin character does half the width of an eastern
character.

Here is the docs for the font: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/typography/font-list/simsun...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/typography/font-list/simsun#simsun-extb)

It feels unsupported overall, but I set it up in the terminal and text editors
and I am happy with it, It looks like a proper font, and not a dumbed-down-to-
align-to-pixels font.Also there are some missing glyphs like áéíóú, but maybe
if more people use it, MS will improve the font =)

------
rb808
Awesome, am loving this one with colors on
[http://app.programmingfonts.org/#press-
start-2p](http://app.programmingfonts.org/#press-start-2p)

It would be nice to have some flags to show what the license is for each one.

~~~
ChrisGranger
[http://programmingfonts.org/list](http://programmingfonts.org/list) contains
licensing information for each font, but I agree that it would be nice to see
on the Test Drive page as well.

~~~
klageveen
Another thing I should integrate I guess. However, just as a general note, you
can safely use every single font featured on app.programmingfonts.org for
yourself.

------
mkesper
Right now there is another font designed for legibility on HN frontpage:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18946601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18946601)

------
tharwan
I think Mensch is missing: [https://robey.lag.net/2010/06/21/mensch-
font.html](https://robey.lag.net/2010/06/21/mensch-font.html)

~~~
klageveen
I think it too!

------
vackosar
OCR-A font was made to be recognizable by 60s OCR tech.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCR-A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCR-A)

~~~
ignaloidas
It's machine first, so human readability falls. Though there's the benefit
that you will newer wonder what the letter is _at all_ as they are so
distinct.

------
tigen
The Terminus font doesn't seem to render properly there. Possibly it's just my
browser but I use that font all the time in the terminal. Here it looks
glitchy/aliased or something.

~~~
drey08
It's one of the reasons why I still haven't fully switched to VSCode. There
doesn't seem to be a way to disable antialiasing in VSCode to make this font
look good, as far as I can tell.

~~~
klageveen
You can uncheck the AA option on programmingfonts.org though. I need to make
something to make fonts render at their “proper” size when needed...

------
grogenaut
it'd be cool if I could just use the down arrow to move down the list of fonts
instead of the mouse

------
no_wizard
Seems worth plugging nerd fonts if someone has not done so already. It’s a
great place to get patched fonts like this (most of them support ligatures for
Instance and are based on a lot of these fonts)
[https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-
fonts/blob/master/readme.m...](https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-
fonts/blob/master/readme.md)

------
jve
Argh, why hijack my browser back button and history? :/ Otherwise, thanks for
nice list to quickly compare those fonts :)

------
rbanffy
I like the way Go Mono fixes Luxi Mono's "0", but I like Luxi's "g" better.

------
alex_hitchins
This is a great resource, but doesn't come up with anything that beats Monaco
for me.

Does anyone have any known good reference sites for going about creating your
own font? I've thought about this a lot yet never had the time to do. I think
creating my own would be incredibly cool!

------
ayoisaiah
I've been using IBM Plex Mono¹ for the last couple of weeks. Switched from
Source Code Pro, and I love it!

[1]:
[https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Mono](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Mono)

------
mesaframe
Is there any theme like ambiance theme available on Visual Studio Code?

[https://screenshots.firefox.com/9wlM0C9RCyou4Rk9/app.program...](https://screenshots.firefox.com/9wlM0C9RCyou4Rk9/app.programmingfonts.org)

------
h1d
Kudos for including BPmono. I have been using it as my favorite programming
font for 10 years which somehow gets no attention when people talk about their
favorite fonts.

I've tried many of the more famous ones but the clarity is simply good.

------
Dowwie
I'm so adjusted to Iosevka that anything else looks really weird to me..

------
moolc
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhMRAjX95k0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhMRAjX95k0)
is the way that helped me selecting new monospaced font

------
pmarreck
Fira Code with ligature support turned on in your editor, or GTFO. LOVE. IT.

[https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode)

------
Soroush
Excellent website! May I suggest:

1\. Show an indicator which font is currently selected.

2\. Allow users to save their favorites, so they can find what they like
faster next time they visit.

Thanks for sharing it, it's very useful :)

------
rakic
[https://twitter.com/boletrone/status/1087225897244151810](https://twitter.com/boletrone/status/1087225897244151810)

~~~
jeremy_wiebe
Fonts seem to be a very a personal thing. There are demonstrably better and
worse fonts, but at the end of the day, I would guess the there are half as
many “best” (is favourite) fonts at my workplace as there are engineers.

That said, I have to check those out you mention (never heard of any of them).
Thanks.

My current personal favourite is Hasklig.

------
tomoya
Recommend a mixed font in Chinese environment YaHei Consolas Hybrid

------
vzaliva
It would be nice to see some Unicode things in the example, like arrows,
various math symbols, etc. I am looking for a good programming font with the
support of math symbols.

------
martijn_himself
I don't own a Mac at the minute but I must say Monaco is hands down the best
programming font I've worked with.

Most of the fonts on this list don't even come close.

~~~
lispm
Apple long ago chose 'Menlo' and it now uses in some applications (Xcode,
Terminal) the font 'SF Mono'.

------
soperj
Probably a very un-used font for programming, but my favorite is Operator Mono
(Book Italic) -
[https://www.typography.com/fonts/operator/styles/](https://www.typography.com/fonts/operator/styles/)
-

Strange to be using an italic to code in, but I quite like it.

edit: someone has actually added ligatures to operator mono if that's your
thing ([https://github.com/kiliman/operator-mono-
lig](https://github.com/kiliman/operator-mono-lig))

~~~
fxfan
600usd is a bit steep- no disrespect to the designer.

~~~
soperj
It is $199 for 1 computer. Don't know where you see 600?

~~~
brennebeck
I’d imagine from the pricing for the complete font, which is that price:
[http://s.rnbk.org/Photo-2019-01-21-14-10-2jezMYmKLZXqYskTrz6...](http://s.rnbk.org/Photo-2019-01-21-14-10-2jezMYmKLZXqYskTrz6M.jpg)

Though, the price for the Mono-only (bottom of sidebar) does match what you
said. So I’m guessing it’s just misread/UX.

Edit: sentence clarity

------
mmgutz
For those who want to quickly compare two fonts, simply click on the desired
fonts and click forward and back button on your browser.

------
throwaway918237
No love for gohu font? ([http://font.gohu.org/](http://font.gohu.org/))

~~~
dlkinney
Similarly, Terminus.[1]

It's a fantastic bitmap[2] font and I find that I use it on all my low-DPI
screens. I think it reads a little better than gohu, but agreed: there's no
love for tiny fonts on OP's link...

1: [https://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/](https://files.ax86.net/terminus-
ttf/)

2: [http://terminus-font.sourceforge.net/](http://terminus-
font.sourceforge.net/)

------
jswizzy
I wish there was a filter. It would be nice to filter out fonts that are not
mono typed and don't have ligatures.

~~~
klageveen
They’re all mono though ;)

------
hivacruz
Works terrible for me with Safari or Chrome. Can't start with <?php, can't
copy/paste some code.

------
tomc1985
Default size 16, spacing 1.4? Good lord that is way too big...

(props for remembering set values between reloads though)

------
rawfael
This is very nice. I'd like to see the Solarized color scheme and Apple's SF
Mono.

------
rbanffy
I love the way Consola Mono and Nova Mono remind me of Smalltalk's Cream font.
<3

------
nielsbot
Cool! But I would love to have Input Sans included... (Not just Input Mono).

------
jimijazz
Is it me or Bitstream Vera Sans Mono looks exactly the same as DejaVu Mono ?

~~~
uwu
from wikipedia:

> The DejaVu fonts are modifications of the Bitstream Vera fonts designed for
> greater coverage of Unicode, as well as providing more styles.

------
coldcode
Is there some way to view them in light mode? I am not a fan of the dark.

~~~
kps
Is there a color scheme that doesn't look like a tornado hit a paint factory?
I couldn't find one.

------
ricanontherun
Surprised by how bad these fonts look with languages other than JS.

------
fastflo
good old misc fixed is missing?
[https://pasteboard.co/HXsWkSo.png](https://pasteboard.co/HXsWkSo.png)

------
miguelrochefort
My Eve code sure would look good with these fonts...

------
mjaniczek
target="_blank" would certainly help usability of the "Info & Download" links.

Thanks for the website, klageveen!

~~~
klageveen
Don’t get me started on target=“_blank” and UX ;)

------
enriquto
for bitmap fonts it should disable the resize option (or at least quantize it
to the sizes where it makes sense)

------
betimsl
I use IBM Plex. You should add it to the list, I think it's free.

~~~
ChrisGranger
It's on the list already, under Plex Mono.

[http://app.programmingfonts.org/#plex-
mono](http://app.programmingfonts.org/#plex-mono)

~~~
betimsl
Oh sorry. I didn't see it there.

------
ilrwbwrkhv
very good site...... love it

~~~
klageveen
Thanks!

------
make3
Dude where is the Python support, the fastest growing language after
Javascript, and much bigger than some of the other included languages

~~~
klageveen
It's just a default set from some release of CodeMirror. I guess I should
upgrade that..

------
ab_c
None of the fonts in "programmingfonts.org" have ligatures so no thanks.
[https://www.slant.co/topics/5611/~monospace-programming-
font...](https://www.slant.co/topics/5611/~monospace-programming-fonts-with-
ligatures)

~~~
ChrisGranger
Fira Code, Hasklig, Iosevka, and Monoid (from your link) are all on
Programming Fonts.

