IMO a font specimen site may be the worst place to use font-display: swap. Was wondering why I was looking at what seemed indistinguishable from Courier, turns out what I saw was exactly Courier.
Is it only me but I really dislike "Code Ligations"? I have to mark some chars to count how many consecutive "=" simbols there are... or \/ looking like V without having other chars near it to distinguish. Having to copy paste diamond shape to find out it is <>. arrows with squiggly tails, /> being ugly, <. having dot in the middle...
That could be the maximum I'd like out of font to have "proper" greater/less-equal sign.
They always seemed to me like solutions to a nonexistent problem. They make the code less readable, but ligatures exist and they seemed like a cool tech thing to implement, and they might look cool in screenshots. But in practice, in my opinion, they're worse than just having the normal characters. But I guess it's a matter of opinion, no harm in other people using them.
I've been using a custom version - you can customize the font¹ and build your own ttf (or better yet, ttc) using the build system supplied in the repository².
be5invis, the author of the font, deserves a special mention for creating a whole custom DSL called PatEL (Parametric Type Expression Language) to generate the font programmatically!
Renzhi, if you ever come around to read this, thank you so much for Iosevka, man!
I have a custom build of this font, use it everywhere now.
One thing is that the width by default is too compact and the extended is too wide for my taste. Upon searching I found somebody's build that has width 576. I don't know why that number, but I used it in my current builds and it turns out pretty much perfect for terminal use for me, just wide enough.
The hookiest tail for lowercase l man, love it.
Even for my own website, with some tighter tracking and it can work okay as a text font.
The heading of Iosevka doesn't do the font right, my first thought was that this would be yet another soulless sans-serif. But it has tons of interesting variants. Hats of to Iosevka Etoile. See also <https://monaspace.githubnext.com> if you like big versatile font families.
I’ve used Iosevka for years but recently switched to Commit Mono [0]. It hits all the right spots for me, is customizable, and does smart kerning which is neat.
My go-to monospace font in everything I use nowadays. Way back, it used to be JetBrains Mono. When I decided to give Iosevka a try, I actually started with the expanded variant, because I wasn't accustomed to the narrow jump. Took a while, but at some point I took that jump back to the default and it's stuck. Thanks for your efforts on this font Renzhi!
Have been using it for a couple years. Before that I was using Fira Code/Mono which was also fantastic. However, once I got used to the condensed Iosevka, all the other fonts just felt loose and not space efficient enough in my IDE and terminal.
This is the best font I have ever found, and I have tried a lot of them over the years. The ability to specify your own variations and generate your own fonts is really useful. I am a big fan of the dotted zero, for example.
The readability is excellent, and this font replaced everything else that I tried before. Highly recommended!
First time I used Iosevka I felt really nauseated, kind of like getting motion sickness, it was a really bizarre experience for a font to give me. I was on a smaller screen though and getting some more characters in without getting tiny was actually a selling point, so I gave it another go and eventually got over the feeling.
Now (after ... gosh, 6, 7, 8? years probably) I love it, use it everywhere and other monospace font feels super w i d e and weird.
It also has many weights. In my opinion it's one of the best monospaced fonts where you actually can use weight as an additional dimension in syntax highlighting.
It is interesting that it differentiates between oblique and italic, something that not many fonts aimed at the monospace crowd do, in both the English and Cyrillic alphabets. The list of variants for the letter k is longer than I expected.
Alas, it is oblong, not square.
And 7 thousand-odd code points is not as large a range as it used to be a couple of decades ago. That said, it does have MouseText, the 7-segment LED digits, and suchlike from the Supplementary Plane 1.
The default font since GNOME 48 is Adwaita Sans (a modified Inter with different l's and I's) and for monospace it is Adwaita Mono (a modified Iosevka.)
Once we use Berkeley mono font, we will never switch to another one :)
Whenever font discussions come up, I will try everyones suggestions to find better than what I have, and always came back to Berkeley. Its almost near perfect for coding!
It has very poor character coverage, especially compared to Iosevka whose author speaks Mandarin as his main language (IIRC), and put a lot of effort into supporting as many languages as possible.
Used Iosevka for a while, now fully on Aporetic for everything monospace. Something about the thin and tall serif just clicks with me, and Aporetic seemed to work better size wise for my terminals and GUIs.
I have been using this font for 3 years now. I can't, and won't get off it. I use it wherever I can - heck there's an Arch package! I'm pleasantly surprised by how much something this simple makes me happy. Legitimately a font has added to my life.
As we are using hypertext, I thought it would be useful to throw a link in here... but following your instructions feels like navigating a paper map. I don't see LICENSE.md here: https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/releases
Good to know that the age old tradition of calling a font with serifs sans-serif is well alive and kicking.
The reason here is that the basic glyph shape is that of a sans-serif, but still got serifs added afterwards. That doesn't stop it from diluting the meaning of the term.
I felt like my eyes hurt when I tried this font. It's hard for me to switch away from the standard width monospace fonts. At the moment I use Commit Mono. Extra horizontal space might be nice but it's not worth risking any discomfort
That could be the maximum I'd like out of font to have "proper" greater/less-equal sign.
I've been using a custom version - you can customize the font¹ and build your own ttf (or better yet, ttc) using the build system supplied in the repository².
be5invis, the author of the font, deserves a special mention for creating a whole custom DSL called PatEL (Parametric Type Expression Language) to generate the font programmatically!
Renzhi, if you ever come around to read this, thank you so much for Iosevka, man!
¹https://typeof.net/Iosevka/customizer
²https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/blob/master/doc/custom-b...
Why is ttc better?
The hookiest tail for lowercase l man, love it.
Even for my own website, with some tighter tracking and it can work okay as a text font.
Another great customizable font is Maple Mono [0]
[0] https://font.subf.dev/en/
The heading of Iosevka doesn't do the font right, my first thought was that this would be yet another soulless sans-serif. But it has tons of interesting variants. Hats of to Iosevka Etoile. See also <https://monaspace.githubnext.com> if you like big versatile font families.
[0] https://commitmono.com/
The readability is excellent, and this font replaced everything else that I tried before. Highly recommended!
Now (after ... gosh, 6, 7, 8? years probably) I love it, use it everywhere and other monospace font feels super w i d e and weird.
Alas, it is oblong, not square.
And 7 thousand-odd code points is not as large a range as it used to be a couple of decades ago. That said, it does have MouseText, the 7-segment LED digits, and suchlike from the Supplementary Plane 1.
I like it a lot!
One thing I definitely love is it's easy to access. It has been packed for many package managers. I can just brew install or yay -S to get it.
Whenever font discussions come up, I will try everyones suggestions to find better than what I have, and always came back to Berkeley. Its almost near perfect for coding!
https://github.com/ahatem/IoskeleyMono
>Iosevka configuration to mimic the look and feel of Berkeley Mono as closely as possible.
Discussed recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49161743
But alright, I realized you must download the archive to find LICENSE.md in there: https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/archive/refs/tags/v34.9....
The license is "SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1." from http://scripts.sil.org/OFL
The reason here is that the basic glyph shape is that of a sans-serif, but still got serifs added afterwards. That doesn't stop it from diluting the meaning of the term.
Some time ago I switched to wayland/sway/foot, and I'm on 0xProtoNerdFont, quite pleasant as well.