
Sublime Text 3 now has font ligature support - indentit
https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/dev-build-3145/32340
======
skytreader
Honest question: Why would you want ligatures in plaintext? Especially in
code, wouldn't that be weird as some people tend to manually align their code?
Like,

    
    
      modular_raft = 10
      spam         = 20
    

The "ft" in modular_raft should convert to a ligature so (I assume) it will
then take one character, instead of two. Then developers viewing that source
would have different alignments, depending on whether they use Sublime 3 or
not.

(EDIT: Formatting.)

~~~
apendleton
Besides fancy programming fonts (which I have mixed feelings about), ligatures
and other complex text shaping features can also be necessary for legibly
rendering string literals in some non-Latin scripts, like Arabic script. Even
if your code is all in Latin letters, you might have test data, UI text, etc.,
that's in something else.

~~~
wcarss
Thank you for providing this insight -- I'm one of the seemingly rare few who
hates ligatures in my Latin-script fonts, and when I saw this submission my
brain leapt to "augh, why!?" \-- you've given at least one very clear use-case
where ligature support is valuable, which I was totally unaware of.

~~~
drivingmenuts
I've been using Fira Code for a while and having ligatures does make code a
bit easier for me to read. I certainly could live without the feature, but if
it's there, I'm going to turn it on.

Which, ultimately, is what matters. You actually have to turn it on in
Jetbrain's editors.

It's a decent "no harm, no foul" feature.

~~~
computerex
I tried to get ligatures to work in gvim for so long because Fira Code looks
wonderful with ligatures. Could not make it work :(

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no_wizard
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I nearly quit sublime after using an editor that supported
this feature for a month. While sublime is vastly superior in my mind to most
other editors (spacemacs and Vim in my book not withstanding) I make a lot of
use of icons in the Nerd Fonts for custom icons so this is a huge plus for me.

In my haste: forgot to link to the nerd fonts page!
[https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts](https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-
fonts)

For what it’s worth, I may be a tad OCD about how my desktop looks and feels
:P

~~~
fastball
Could you expand on what exactly you use Nerd Fonts for?

I downloaded a few fonts and was expecting using an icon code + a ligature
supporting editor to result in the icon magically appearing in my editor but
that does not seem to be the case.

~~~
no_wizard
I extract the icons and make my own folders and theme stuffs. It unfortunately
only magically works in Vim with nerdtree or in SpaceMacs with their tree
plugin. However I enjoy making my own folders and icons so I don’t mind. I
should really publish this, there may be a hidden demand here I was unaware of

------
im3w1l
I love the idea of ligatures, but I don't find Fira Code very comfortable. Any
other recommendations?

EDIT: Some fonts I like are Courier New and Droid Sans Mono.

~~~
kiliman
If you like Operator Mono, I created a project that will add ligatures to the
font.

[https://github.com/kiliman/operator-mono-
lig](https://github.com/kiliman/operator-mono-lig)

~~~
bgdkbtv
Awesome, was just looking for something like that!

Now that sublime supports it, is there a way to use this font with it?

------
strmpnk
It seems to work but it does render certain ligatures incorrectly on OS X for
me. For example, <* is rendered as the <> ligature and <\- is rendered as </.
Since it's a dev build, I'm sure it will take some ironing out before it hits
the stable version but this is really promising!

~~~
jbrooksuk
I believe this has now been fixed, although I've noticed a few other issues
but the forum is down.

~~~
strmpnk
I can verify that the issue I saw has been fixed. Now that's the kind of turn
around time that I like to see!

------
hbhakhra
Tangent: Any good resources to read up on typography? I feel like of all
design related issues thats the one I have zero knowledge or insight on.

~~~
kakkun
I enjoyed this one:
[https://practicaltypography.com/](https://practicaltypography.com/)

~~~
npolet
Great link. Just finished reading through it and I feel more educated on
typography. At the very least I now have a better feel of the lingo and
vocabulary which surrounds typography. Thanks.

------
bsimpson
Yay!

Now if only the TypeScript plugin were more reliable. Ligatures and TS support
were the things making me consider switching. The TS plugin for Sublime is
disappointingly buggy.

~~~
boterock
I've been using Language Server to learn rust while coming back to ST after
using VSCode extensively. Have you tried using a LSP extension instead of a
TypeScript one?

~~~
bsimpson
No, but maybe I should. Thanks for the tip!

One of the things I hate about the native TS extension is that it disables
tab-completion in TS files. I wonder if LSP fixes that.

------
tuananh
Can i use operator mono with Fira code ligature?

~~~
babygau
From what I know, you could patch your `Operator Mono` or `Operator Mono SSm`
fonts. Check out this [https://github.com/kiliman/operator-mono-
lig](https://github.com/kiliman/operator-mono-lig).

~~~
tuananh
Thank you!

------
therealdrag0
Tangential, that site hijacks my CMD-F shortcut preventing me from searching
in page.

I hate that.

------
memco
Excited about this for the increased support for non-Latin languages and the
code ligatures, but sad that it is pegging 2 cores at nearly 100%. Will look
forward to when this is fully stable.

~~~
indentit
probably your projects are just being reindexed due to the syntax definition
improvements? unless it's the famous Material Theme increased CPU usage
problem or something lol

------
gmemstr
Can confirm Fira Code works fine, although the update has broken the interface
a little bit, at least for me.

~~~
indentit
make sure you report it on the forum post with details like OS, screen
resolution and theme, and it might get a quick fix - I've seen it happen
before for other dev build bugs :)

~~~
gmemstr
Came home and checked for updates - they have fixed the issue (that was
quick!).

------
Shorel
Great! Time to update versions.

------
visarga
I'd rather they integrated SFTP/SCP natively into the editor instead of having
to mock with third party extensions.

~~~
lghh
What does that have to do with ligatures?

~~~
sleepybrett
He thinks the developers shouldn't waste time on this feature, and instead
waste time on another feature that already has multiple solutions in the
plugin library.

Since I don't think you would be able to do this kind of work in a plugin at
all, and can clearly implement his feature in a plugin I feel like he can
pound sand.

I think he just doesn't want to pay the pittance the developer of the best scp
plugin wants for his work.

~~~
visarga
I have used editors that aren't as polished but handler file I/O better.

------
partycoder
I think Sublime Text is very good but has fallen behind in terms of version
control. I think Atom and VS Code are winning the war right now. Especially
because the latter are free.

~~~
ssijak
Why do people need git support in an editor so much? Using git from the
terminal is easy and you always know what is executed because you do it
manually.

~~~
paganel
I'm in the same boat as you (I'm also doing "git diff"manually from the
command line before each commit).

And to answer your question, probably for the same reason why people have
moved on from Assembler to C to managed memory languages to JS and to today's
JS frameworks, they want to avoid the "rough" parts by adding another layer of
abstraction. For some people constantly going back to the terminal looks
"rough", I guess.

~~~
rootlocus
> they want to avoid the "rough" parts by adding another layer of abstraction.

They've also become thousands of times more productive.

~~~
plopz
Thousands of times more productive, WOW! So we can replace companies entire
dev departments with 1 person!

~~~
rootlocus
> So we can replace companies entire dev departments with 1 person!

Do entire dev departments use ASM for shitting out crappy electron apps? If it
wasn't for all those abstractions, a large amount of today's developers
wouldn't work in software development. Show some respect for those whose
shoulders you sit upon.

