
Victor Mono – A free programming font - ingve
https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/
======
smsm42
Cursive unfortunately looks very distracting. Having to context-switch when
reading the code between two character sets is going to be exhausting - I felt
it even when looking at the example screenshots, I can imagine how taxing it
would be to go through hundreds of pages of code in this mode. The non-cursive
letters look pretty clean but I'm afraid cursive kills it as programmer's font
for me.

~~~
alpaca128
The font includes both cursive and normal italic variants. The non-cursive
version is in the files ending with "Oblique". I set the editor to only use
cursive for comments, that works nicely for me - in actual code it would
definitely be too much.

~~~
tazard
Oh thanks. I didn't realize you could enable italics only for comments. That's
exactly what I was looking for!

------
jypepin
I appreciate the effort, the font looks solid, but I really don't understand
the new trend of using italic in the code syntax. It seems like every trendy
frontend engineer has their sublime text or vscode set up with a font that
uses italic for imports, comments, etc and I really don't see the appeal.

~~~
bmpafa
From the OP's section titled "Why?" :

> When it comes to programming fonts, I prefer something strict, readable and
> relatively condensed for the code proper, complemented with a more informal,
> flowing and human style for things like comments and reserved keywords.

~~~
bmpafa
Also from FAQ :

> A programming font with cursive italics and ligatures is the worst idea in
> the world. This is absolutely horrible. BTW, I am really angry.

> [Answer:] Not really a question, but anyway: People actually like different
> things. And it's OK. It's OK if someone else prefers a different font for
> code than you do. We don't have to use the same one. ️

(though obv. parent post is not hostile like this Q)

~~~
detaro
Shouldn't it be called " _A_ sophisticated programming font" then? :D

~~~
hprotagonist
only if it is also "for humans".

~~~
detaro
Seems like the submission title was changed in the meantime?

When I made the comment it was "The sophisticated programming font".

------
stared
I am sad to hear that much negativity here on HN. I mean, sure - it's about
aesthetics and some people may have strong feelings about that (not, it's not
"objective"!). At the same time - it is a free font, which you can use __if
__you like it. It is not a new standard you have to follow. It this case I
would understand the outrage.

Personally, I feel like a traditionalist (full !==, no italics, etc). But...
find these experiments with programming fonts refreshing. Also, I remember
times (not long ago!), when having a highlighted font in Sublime Text was
considered inferior to the "traditional way" of monochrome in Vim or Emacs.

Times change (I wanted to put here a "Times New Roman" pun).

~~~
dvt
I feel you're throwing some shade my way (which is fine), but I just want to
re-iterate that cursive is indeed _objectively_ more difficult to read. This
has been quantified since (at least) 1929[1]. But there are more recent
sources[2] as well.

[1]
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220671.1929.10...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220671.1929.10879960)

[2] [https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/08/31/why-cursive-
har...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/08/31/why-cursive-hard-
read/R3dpwR81OL3PBTYQpXqT6O/story.html)

~~~
nurettin
I will use the "just try it out" method no matter how intensely you believe
that studies performed on fonts during the pre-ww2 era relate to modern
programming.

~~~
stared
In general, studies measure the average effect.

Usually, there is a lot of variances, so even if on average something is
worse, for some individuals it is better.

------
dvt
> A programming font with cursive italics and ligatures is the worst idea in
> the world. This is absolutely horrible. BTW, I am really angry.

I'm not angry, but I'm pretty sure it's _objectively_ a bad idea. Provably,
it's more difficult to read cursive fonts than, say, sans-serif monospace
fonts.

Not to mention that the argument that "people like different things" is just
not very good. It's simply a bad design choice. Cool project, and the
monospace as well as ligatures are awesome, but the cursive italics are most
definitely a bust. For context, I've used Fira Code[1] for the past few years
and I'm quite happy with it. Author's claim that there aren't any free clean
programming fonts is also a bit bizarre; we see free fonts released all the
time.

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

~~~
jjeaff
First of all, readability of something is going to vary person to person.
Studies may have found the averages skew toward less readable, but I doubt
that applies to 100% of the population. Once you are used to it, it will
hardly make a difference.

Secondly, it's only objectively bad in your contrived scenario where the only
thing taken into account is readability.

I have been using a cursive font for terms like "public function" and other
oft repeated phrases. The stark difference allows me to more quickly skip over
them. I don't need to 'read' them.

But my main reason is I just like the style. I stare at code all day long. I
want to make it a bit stylistic and fun. Lots of people also have backgrounds
on their desktop, but a solid black background would probably be less
distracting and make finding icons easier.

I also wash and polish my car on occasion, even though leaving it dirty would
not affect it's primary purpose, to carry me from point a to point b.

------
spraak
It's a cool effort but I guess it's not for me — I much prefer <= over ≤ and
>= over ≥ and !== over ≠ etc. because I find it more explicit and readable
than a condensed form.

~~~
big_chungus
Yeah, I tried ligatures and never liked them. If I type them as two, I'd like
them to appear as two; I never liked it when I back-spaced on what _looked_
like one character and found two. Mostly because my head is usually a bit
ahead of where my fingers and the screen are, so this throws me off and I have
to go back (this is why I ended up back on vim after trying out vscode for a
while, even w/vim mode, it's not perfect). Also, I could never tell the
difference between single equals and long equals (that was really two). I'm
glad they're there as some like them, but I don't get the appeal.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I fond that treating a ligature as two characters (or more) in the editor
helps with that backspace problem. So if you type >= which is then rendered as
≥, a backspace should bring you back to >, not nothing.

------
JasonSage
Can somebody explain to me why narrow programming fonts seem to be trending so
strongly lately? I really don't understand, personally.

I have a much, MUCH harder time reading a narrow font.

I also find it aesthetically inferior to a "non-narrow" font so much that even
if it was as readable or more, I feel like I would have a hard time getting
myself to use it.

Is there some other aspect that people like, such as being able to work in a
narrower editor window? If this is purely subjective, why aren't non-narrow
fonts also circulating on the front page every week?

~~~
tobr
Some people fool themselves into thinking that they can save space by using a
very condensed font. That’s not true. The squashed shapes makes the letters
more similar, which makes the text less legible, which means you need to
compensate by pushing _up_ the overall size. You can only save space by
optimizing for the most legible typeface, allowing you to reduce the size.

The Victor Mono site is a perfect example: the body text is set quite large,
with very generous leading, and still it is very hard to read, partly because
of the stretched letter shapes.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
If you want to save space, just go with a proportional programming font.
Legibility goes up because of kerning, and space is saved at the sacrifice of
losing the ability to do ascii art.

------
kelsolaar
I have been using Pragmata Pro
([https://www.fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/](https://www.fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/))
for over a year and it has been fantastic. I'm using it in PyCharm for the UI
and Text Editor and in VSCode.

~~~
skosch
Pragmata is nice. For those looking for a very similar free font, check out
Iosevka ([https://typeof.net/Iosevka/](https://typeof.net/Iosevka/))

------
jandrese
I'm not loving the italics. I find them a bit hard to read in his code sample.

------
azhenley
There are some nice things about this. I really like how the normal text
looks, but the cursive italics looks horrid!

------
keyle
Sometimes, it hasn't been done before because it has been attempted and
discarded...

------
breadandcrumbel
I like the more rounded appearance of the glyphs, which to me visually
resembles a sans serif typeface rather than a rigid monospaced font. It makes
reading code typeset in Victor Mono more like reading an enjoyable piece of
text.

------
aidenn0
So I was going to complain about calling their palmer-inspired face "italic"
until I looked it up and the term "italic" has a completely different meaning
for typefaces than it does for handwriting. TIL.

------
gabcoh
The site seems to create a huge amount of load on my computer. As soon as I
open the page, usage across all 4 of my cpu cores seems to shoot up from 1-10%
all the way to 70-100%. I'm running Firefox 69 on arch linux.

~~~
big_chungus
Seconded, though not as bad for me (FF 70, win10). Eats about half as much CPU
as decoding a 4k video, which is crazy for what appears to be a static site.

Just tested on arch w/FF 70 and much worse.

~~~
Moru
Most likely the color gradient background fading the whole time. If you don't
have a good gfx card I guess it might be taxing on the cpu.

------
sabujp
I found a bug in the font rendering! Maybe just a bug in the way the website
is rendering it on the try it page?

    
    
        => becomes a ⇒ (U+21d2)
    

but

    
    
        <= becomes ≤ (U+2264)
    

AFAICT there's no way to make a left arrow with double lines be only 2 chars
wide, i.e. how do i make a ⇐ (U+21d0). A 3 char wide left arrow works though,
e.g. :

    
    
        <== becomes ⟸ (U+27f8)
    

Like the font otherwise, there are some other interesting unicode conversions,
e.g. :

    
    
        === becomes ≡ (U+2261)

~~~
nine_k
This is not a bug; this is how other ligature fonts, notably Fira Code, work.

≤ is used way more often than ⇐.

------
alpaca128
I really like the overall design of the font. I'm not used to such thin
letters, but it looks very clean.

Not sure if I'll get used to the cursive part, but it seems like this is
purely in the text editor's control, and in my case text is only displayed in
cursive when it's marked up that way in .org files(EDIT: it turns out it's
easy to make Vim display comments as cursive, luckily without affecting
keywords: "highlight Comment cterm=italic gui=italic").

In my opinion this is fantastic work for a free font.

------
Nicci00
I don't see the appeal of italics or ligatures, other than simple rice. I've
been using DejaVu mono for the past 10 years, it's fine for me.

~~~
nine_k
DejaVu Sans Mono with ligatures from Fira Code is the best I could find so
far.

------
computerex
Does anyone know how to use this with vs code? I am setting the edit font
family to "Victor Mono" but it doesn't work. I can see the font and use it in
my terminal so I know it's properly installed. I have even restarted vs code
and no luck.

~~~
ron22
Same issue

------
gamesbrainiac
I've been using Consolas for over a decade. I just have one question, and that
is, does the bold version of the font have the same width as the non-bold
version.

This is a killer feature for me.

------
catoc
Thanks for a great contribution. I really like the font - except for the
italics. For comments I could may be learn to live with, but for the code
syntax itself - no

------
kzrdude
The cursive parts are less legible. I think it could work with some
leading/trailing strokes removed. Preferably switch out the cursive r too.

------
alexeiz
Letters are too close to each other on a normal DPI screen with the 10-12
point size font. Maybe it looks fine on a high DPI screen, but on my screen it
illegible. For the reference, I prefer Iosevka and Fira Code for code editing
and console.

------
desireco42
I am impressed by the quality of this font, it has everything modern dev would
want from a font.

I think italic and ligatures are fantastic.

------
harry-wood
"free" as in freedom, or just free as in $0? Anyone see a mention of
copyright/license anywhere on there?

~~~
detaro
The repo says MIT: [https://github.com/rubjo/victor-
mono](https://github.com/rubjo/victor-mono) (although I'm not sure how/how
well MIT works for fonts, so maybe worth an issue)

~~~
Aeolun
MIT is pretty much ‘everything is explicitly allowed’.

~~~
detaro
If you include the copyright info. So if I use your font in a PDF document,
does that document need to have your copyright notice on it? Visibly, or only
in metadata? Always, or only if the font (the "software") is explicitly
embedded into the PDF? How about using it as webfont for the code samples on
my blog?

------
Zyst
Damn, I think I actually really like this!

I'm going to switch from Operator Mono after 3 or so years for the first time,
for a month or so to see if I want to switch completely.

Thanks for contributing this! Really cool font.

------
bla3
Looks cool! The cursive "r" could use some tweaking -- I find the "urn" in the
"return"s in the examples hard to read. Other than that, I like it.

------
J_cst
Downaloded, installed and paid for it. Thank you from Italy. ciao

------
ncmncm
The "contact sheet" doesn't at first appear to contain the letter "l", but it
shows up in the labels, so OK.

"Narcissistpotus"... heh.

~~~
eurasiantiger
The front page ticker also describes the font as ”(im)peachy”

------
ddyevf635372
Beautiful font. Congratulations. This is amazing. I started to use it and I
love it. Great job and keep up the good work. Well done my friend!

------
achikin
> The typeface is clean, crisp and narrow

But italic is not clean at all, especially for non-native English readers.

------
W0lf
reminds me a lot of Operator Mono/Book, especially the cursive variant

------
rb808
I tried using proportional fonts instead of mono spaced and it actually worked
great. If you really want to save real estate I think that is a better way to
do it.

~~~
aeneasmackenzie
Sadly doesn't work if the language typical format wants you to align things.
Works perfectly in lisp or C though.

~~~
rb808
Usually the only important alignment is left side like Python and proportional
works for those. Do you have any examples where it wouldn't work?

~~~
aeneasmackenzie
Anything like this:

    
    
        foo(a,
            b)

------
new_realist
Reminds me a bit of Fantasque Sans Mono.

------
chadlavi
What is this cursive italic nonsense. I keep seeing it, but why would anyone
want it? How is it helpful?

------
throwaway_727
Why does the linked site require JavaScript and trackers to work? The site is
completely inaccessible using Firefox Focus.

~~~
zzo38computer
I think it is not very good it won't work without the JavaScripts and trackers
enabled. Fortunately if you access the repository you can still see and
download the font even if JavaScript is not enabled.

However, I like to use the "Fixed" bitmap font.

------
badatshipping
Why is this better than Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, Consolas, SF Mono, Pragmata
Pro, and Operator Mono? The reason can be anything, but what is the reason?

I don't find that this font outperforms any of those fonts on any of the
metrics listed on the website (crispness, legibility). Is this, like, a
subjective thing? Or do I have bad taste?

~~~
nine_k
(1) Do you have an objective metric of legibility? Can you measure it without
running a large study?

(2) Can you decide for _yourself_ whether a particular font is better for you?
Do you need an objective metric to persuade you?

(3) Did you encounter projects that people do to scratch their own itch? Were
any of them occasionally useful for a wider audience?

~~~
badatshipping
I only ask because the website says

 _" because there just wasn't any free or paid font that I found both
readable, effective and elegant"_

and I can think of several, including the ones I listed.

I'm not saying not to do projects like this! Scratching your own itch and
sharing your solution is great. I'm just skeptical, as someone who has
obsessively tried just about every programming font out there, when I read
that a new font does something better than the handful of fonts I always end
up returning to. What is that something?

~~~
radeklew
The website doesn't claim that the font does anything better, except that it
is more readable, effective, and elegant, in the experience of the designer,
Rune B.

If you really do know about several fonts that Rune B. finds more readable,
effective, and elegant than this one, I would urge you to contact them.

------
AmericanChopper
Devoting more than a couple of minutes to choosing an IDE font seems like the
height of bikeshedding to me. Using cursive in your IDE just seems completely
beyond reason...

I have no idea at all why this is becoming so trendy. Do people have so few
problems to work on that this has become a reasonable use of their time?

~~~
macintux
As pointed out several times on a recent discussion, including responses to
this question, programmers spend a _lot_ of time staring at text. It’s not
unreasonable to want to find a good typeface.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21303707](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21303707)

“I don’t see the reason” is rarely a good rationale for blaming those who do
for being wastrels.

~~~
AmericanChopper
I’m not blaming anybody for anything, and I understand that some people enjoy
endlessly tinkering with their setups. What I don’t understand is why this
particular topic has become so popular recently (I’ve seen so many posts about
it) for two reasons.

1) The difference between the best (according to your own taste) font your IDE
offers off the shelf, and the best font you can find anywhere in existence
seems marginal to me.

2) Optimising for readability and then introducing cursive to your IDE seems
like two diometrically opposed ideas to me.

I’m not trying to be a Luddite or a hipster. Do what makes you happy. I just
don’t get this trend and can’t help but think it’s a waste of time, especially
if productivity is one of the supposed goals of this.

~~~
Semiapies
I suspect you've devoted more effort to these posts than most people here have
to picking fonts.

~~~
AmericanChopper
Perhaps expressing a view that something is a waste of time is naturally a
waste of time itself. That could be an interesting philosophical position to
take, but I don’t think it contributes much to the discussion in this case.
Perhaps I’m discussing the merits of the topic at hand to satisfy my own
intellectual curiosity.

~~~
macintux
Interspersing aspersions against those who have different priorities is rarely
a good way to “discuss the merits” of the topic at hand.

“Do people have so few problems to work on that this has become a reasonable
use of their time?”

“completely beyond reason”

I don’t care a great deal about the topic, but it offends me when people with
a passion for technical materials are disparaged for their interest.

~~~
AmericanChopper
I haven’t made a single ad hominem here. The opinions I expressed were
directed exclusively at the topic being discussed.

~~~
macintux
Ad hominem, no. Disparaging the interest, yes.

It’s possible to explore a topic without the disparagement but you keep
reverting to the “waste of time” theme, which doesn’t indicate an interest in
learning or persuasion.

~~~
AmericanChopper
Ideas should be protected from criticism to avoid disparagement?...

~~~
macintux
No, but a discussion the merits of fonts they find interesting is not enriched
by a troll who hides behind the fig leaf of “discussing the merits of the
topic at hand to satisfy my own intellectual curiosity”.

You’re free to do as you wish, but HN discourages your hobby, and thus the
downvotes. I just regret the time I’ve spent feeding it.

