
Anonymous Pro – a fixed-width font designed for coders - tambourine_man
http://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro
======
8ig8
Here's a good comparison (and vote) of programming fonts:

[http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-
programming...](http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming-
fonts)

Most popular: Source Code Pro

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

Monaco, my favorite, comes at #3.

~~~
dazmax
Argh, why does no one include a tilde in the sample? A raised tilde ruins a
font for me because of the ruby match operator: =~

~~~
contingencies
Can a _vim_ nerd respond with how to display-time-remap a normal tilde to
another unicode codepoint? There are at least four tilde-like glyphs that may
be cast by any middling magician of the Unicode elements: ~⁓〜˜

~~~
RobSis
Looking at src/screen.c, the tilda character is hardcoded. So you'd need to
patch it.

~~~
contingencies
Perhaps a terminal application could do it then.

------
Jongseong
Increasingly, professional typeface designers working today are coders as
well. The OpenType format for fonts allows designers to program font
behaviour, often in pretty sophisticated ways. These range from standard
typographic niceties like automatic substitution of a pre-defined sequence of
glyphs with a ligature, to contextual substitutions of alternates to make a
handwriting font more natural-looking, to even more creative explorations of
the possibilities of the OpenType format.

In addition, many designers are taking advantage of scripting to automate
parts of the design process. For example, Mark Simonson, the designer of the
Anonymous Pro featured here, wrote a script to help you in generating
pangrams: [http://www.marksimonson.com/notebook/view/pangrammer-
helper-...](http://www.marksimonson.com/notebook/view/pangrammer-helper-
robofont-style)

This example is only tangentially related to the typeface design process, but
if you're interested about the intersection of typeface design and technology,
you can look up videos from the Robothon conferences to see what the
possibilities are.

------
laymil
There was a good write up on HN a while back about this font, including a
republished version called Nameless Amateur which fixes the positioning of the
forward slash. See [http://1overn.com/2011/02/02/tweaking-my-favorite-
programmin...](http://1overn.com/2011/02/02/tweaking-my-favorite-programming-
font-anonymous-pro/)

~~~
pleiotrope
Anecdotally, I just installed this font on OS X and don't notice this issue.
It may have been resolved, or perhaps was only an issue in Ubuntu?

~~~
cowsandmilk
I've been using the font for years on both openSUSE and ubuntu and never seen
the problem. Then again, the page says it only shows up at 12pt, which is not
a font size I use.

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Derbasti
One feature I would like to see in a font: Really awesome Unicode support.
With characters like all the subscript/superscript digits and letters. And all
the combining diacritics (like hat, dots, double dots, overlines, vector
arrows etc.).

Also, some fonts are monospaced in the ASCII set, but not for less common
characters such as typographic quoted.

Do you know a font that qualifies here? Because Unicode is super awesome!

~~~
alcari
You probably want Dejavu Sans Mono. Check out [1] to see the Unicode
characters it supports.

[1]
[http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/samples/DejaVuSansMono.pdf](http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/samples/DejaVuSansMono.pdf)

------
ljoshua
I really like Anonymous Pro and use it most of the time on my OS X machines.
When not using Anonymous Pro, I also really like Adobe's Source Code Pro
(free, and even on GitHub):

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

And on Windows? Either Anonymous Pro or Consolas. Having nice fonts for coding
just feels so good. :)

~~~
tuananh
I really like the Light variant of Source Code Pro.

------
JD557
Could you please show an example on the site that's not CSS (or at least it's
a different one)?

In that image there are a lot of important glyphs that cannot be seen, for
example: ()[]/*|!

I haven't tried out the font, so I can't give much feedback on it, but it
seems nice so far (although the '1' looks a little bit weird. I get why, but
it still feels off to me)

------
Tezro
Personally I bought Pragmata Pro once and I'm still delighted to use it as my
favorite fixed-width font.

------
okonomiyaki3000
This is a super excellent font. It was my font of choice for years and years.
I've only recently switched to Meslo ([https://github.com/andreberg/Meslo-
Font](https://github.com/andreberg/Meslo-Font)) but more for the sake of
change than any complaint about Anonymous Pro.

------
noisy_boy
This is the first time I've come across this font. Tried it and I really like
it; it comes across as clear/sharp without sacrificing the smoothness (this is
based on what I can see on Win 7 with Putty and ClearType enabled). I think
I'll continue to use it.

~~~
INTPenis
Try Inconsolata. I actually think Inconsolata somehow looks better in Putty on
Win7 than on Mac OS in iTerm2.

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pdevr
This is the second "coders' font" to hit HN today.

Personally, I like the font. And its license.

~~~
muuck
I think this post is a reaction on that other type post because Anonymous Pro
is few years old.

~~~
mpd
Yeah, it's come up a few times in the past.

[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=anonymous+font](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=anonymous+font)

------
swastik
This looks like a great font. I love Inconsolata—I've used it for more than a
few months now, and it's extremely good. I've tried Monaco, Monaco Lives,
Menlo (I think?) etc. and keep going back to Inconsolata. :-)

------
buster
I love that font (and Source Code Pro).. best monospaced fonts ever :)

------
piratebroadcast
Ive tried installing it in Sublime with no luck - See screenshot- Am I doing
something wrong? [http://imgur.com/NUaNjWO](http://imgur.com/NUaNjWO)

~~~
tuananh
use this

    
    
        "font_face": "My Awesome Font Name"

~~~
piratebroadcast
Thanks, but multiple errors- Which line?

~~~
tuananh
it would looks like this
[http://glui.me/?i=wy5m9dvwss9he20/2013-09-11_at_2.41_PM_2x.p...](http://glui.me/?i=wy5m9dvwss9he20/2013-09-11_at_2.41_PM_2x.png/)

~~~
piratebroadcast
Perfect- Thanks!

------
meerita
I'm using sublime text 3 defaults, with a theme, nothing else. I was a m1+plus
font fan for many years, but now i've got used to this.

------
perlpimp
I really like this font at 9pt for the code as it becomes not antialiased. are
there other pretty not antialiased fonts out there?

~~~
1_player
I suggest Envy Code R [[http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-
preview-7-cod...](http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-
preview-7-coding-font-released)]

It's not a bitmap font, but has a sharp, clean look.

------
CH2IS
It's a great font but having tried it and many more, I always find myself
going back to good ol' Terminus.

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otikik
At least this one has a download link.

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tuzemec
Am I the only one who uses Courier New with no aliasing? Everything else looks
weird to me.

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jheriko
its a shame - the 'standard' size 10 s is ugly, and rendering on smaller sizes
is less than ideal - anti-aliasing is not taken advantage of especially well.

back to lucida console for me, which is perfectly legible at size 6 or 7... :/

------
rgrannell1
I like this font; it's pretty nice for small font sizes (a little like
terminus).

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hayksaakian
my biggest thing is differentiating a 1 and and l

in this font, the 1 is quite distinct, but the l seems too closely similar.

I like the default font in sublime, and how it clearly indicates and l by
having a vertical line with lower right and upper left serifs

------
goblin89
Anonymous Pro is not exactly a sans-serif font, but it does look nice.

~~~
WickyNilliams
"Anonymous Pro, a fixed-width _sans_ designed especially for coders"

There's no reason be expecting a sans-serif!

~~~
goblin89
Pretty sure “sans” is just a shortcut for “sans-serif”—can't tell if you're
joking, though :-)

------
alxndr
Been using Anonymous Pro for years, love it.

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smilekzs
Someone Powerline-patch it!

------
joshstevens
I love this.

------
glorio
thank you for that

