Playing with fonts again

  1. blog

I am getting increasingly frustrated by Fira Mono's lack of italic support so I am looking at alternative fonts again.

Commit Mono

This time I seem to be settling on either Commit Mono or Space Mono. For now I'm using Commit Mono because it's a little more compressed than Fira and does have a italic version. I don't like how Space Mono's parenthesis (()) is "squarish", it feels visually ambiguous with the square brackets ([]), a big no-no for my primary use case (code).

So here I am using a new font, again. It required changing a bunch of configuration files in my home directory (which is in a private repository, sorry) and Emacs configuration (thankfully that's public!).

One gotcha is I realized I didn't actually have a global font configuration in Emacs, as some Faces define their own font family, which overrides the frame defaults.

This is what it looks like, before:

A dark terminal showing the test sheet in Fira Mono
Fira Mono

After:

A dark terminal showing the test sheet in Fira Mono
Commit Mono

(Notice how those screenshots are not sharp? I'm surprised too. The originals look sharp on my display, I suspect this is something to do with the Wayland transition. I've tried with both grim and flameshot, for what its worth.)

They are pretty similar! Commit Mono feels a bit more vertically compressed maybe too much so, actually -- the line height feels too low. But it's heavily customizable so that's something that's relatively easy to fix, if it's really a problem. Its weight is also a little heavier and wider than Fira which I find a little distracting right now, but maybe I'll get used to it.

All characters seem properly distinguishable, although, if I'd really want to nitpick I'd say the © and ® are too different, with the latter (REGISTERED SIGN) being way too small, basically unreadable here. Since I see this sign approximately never, it probably doesn't matter at all.

I like how the ampersand (&) is more traditional, although I'll miss the exotic one Fira produced... I like how the back quotes (`, GRAVE ACCENT) drop down low, nicely aligned with the apostrophe. As I mentioned before, I like how the bar on the "f" aligns with the other top of letters, something in Fira mono that really annoys me now that I've noticed it (it's not aligned!).

A UTF-8 test file

Here's the test sheet I've made up to test various characters. I could have sworn I had a good one like this lying around somewhere but couldn't find it so here it is, I guess.

US keyboard coverage:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz`1234567890-=[]\;',./
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ~!@#$%^&*()_+{}|:"<>?

latin1 coverage: ¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬­®¯°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿
EURO SIGN, TRADE MARK SIGN: €™

ambiguity test:

e¢coC0ODQ iI71lL!|¦
b6G&0B83  [](){}/\.…·•
zs$S52Z%  ´`'"‘’“”«»

all characters in a sentence, uppercase:

the quick fox jumps over the lazy dog
THE QUICK FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG

same, in french:

Portez ce vieux whisky au juge blond qui fume.

dès noël, où un zéphyr haï me vêt de glaçons würmiens, je dîne
d’exquis rôtis de bœuf au kir, à l’aÿ d’âge mûr, &cætera.

DÈS NOËL, OÙ UN ZÉPHYR HAÏ ME VÊT DE GLAÇONS WÜRMIENS, JE DÎNE
D’EXQUIS RÔTIS DE BŒUF AU KIR, À L’AŸ D’ÂGE MÛR, &CÆTERA.

Ligatures test:

-<< -< -<- <-- <--- <<- <- -> ->> --> ---> ->- >- >>-
=<< =< =<= <== <=== <<= <= => =>> ==> ===> =>= >= >>=
<-> <--> <---> <----> <=> <==> <===> <====> :: ::: __
<~~ </ </> /> ~~> == != /= ~= <> === !== !=== =/= =!=
<: := *= *+ <* <*> *> <| <|> |> <. <.> .> +* =* =: :>
(* *) /* */ [| |] {| |} ++ +++ \/ /\ |- -| <!-- <!---

Box drawing alignment tests:
                                                                   █
╔══╦══╗  ┌──┬──┐  ╭──┬──╮  ╭──┬──╮  ┏━━┳━━┓ ┎┒┏┑   ╷  ╻ ┏┯┓ ┌┰┐    ▉ ╱╲╱╲╳╳╳
║┌─╨─┐║  │╔═╧═╗│  │╒═╪═╕│  │╓─╁─╖│  ┃┌─╂─┐┃ ┗╃╄┙  ╶┼╴╺╋╸┠┼┨ ┝╋┥    ▊ ╲╱╲╱╳╳╳
║│╲ ╱│║  │║   ║│  ││ │ ││  │║ ┃ ║│  ┃│ ╿ │┃ ┍╅╆┓   ╵  ╹ ┗┷┛ └┸┘    ▋ ╱╲╱╲╳╳╳
╠╡ ╳ ╞╣  ├╢   ╟┤  ├┼─┼─┼┤  ├╫─╂─╫┤  ┣┿╾┼╼┿┫ ┕┛┖┚     ┌┄┄┐ ╎ ┏┅┅┓ ┋ ▌ ╲╱╲╱╳╳╳
║│╱ ╲│║  │║   ║│  ││ │ ││  │║ ┃ ║│  ┃│ ╽ │┃ ░░▒▒▓▓██ ┊  ┆ ╎ ╏  ┇ ┋ ▍
║└─╥─┘║  │╚═╤═╝│  │╘═╪═╛│  │╙─╀─╜│  ┃└─╂─┘┃ ░░▒▒▓▓██ ┊  ┆ ╎ ╏  ┇ ┋ ▎
╚══╩══╝  └──┴──┘  ╰──┴──╯  ╰──┴──╯  ┗━━┻━━┛          └╌╌┘ ╎ ┗╍╍┛ ┋ ▏▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█

Dashes alignment test:

HYPHEN-MINUS, MINUS SIGN, EN, EM DASH, HORIZONTAL BAR, LOW LINE
--------------------------------------------------
−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
——————————————————————————————————————————————————
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
__________________________________________________

Update: here is another such sample sheet, it's pretty good and has support for more languages while being still relatively small.

So there you have it, got completely nerd swiped by typography again. Now I can go back to writing a too-long proposal again.

Sources and inspiration for the above:

Other fonts

In my previous blog post about fonts, I had a list of alternative fonts, but it seems people are not digging through this, so I figured I would redo the list here to preempt "but have you tried Jetbrains mono" kind of comments.

My requirements are:

Here is the list of alternatives I have considered in the past and why I'm not using them:

So, if I get tired of Commit Mono, I might probably try, in order:

  1. Hack
  2. Jetbrains Mono
  3. IBM Plex Mono

Iosevka, Monoki and Intel One Mono are also good options, but have alignment problems. Iosevka is particularly disappointing as the EM DASH metrics are just completely wrong (much too wide).

This was tested using the Programming fonts site which has all the above fonts, which cannot be said of Font Squirrel or Google Fonts, amazingly. Other such tools:

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