Comment by cflewis
2 years ago
I enjoy the idea, but I do wonder why we don't see more condensed fonts like PragmataPro. I've been using it for close to a decade and I'd love to see more options in the space, but no-one seems willing to go that narrow. Berkeley Graphics has been promising a condensed version of Berkeley Mono for almost a year but nothing has happened there.
Even Monaspace here has a width slider, which starts at "wider than PragmataPro" and just slides to "silly width". I wonder why they didn't try sliding down to a condensed version?
I agree entirely. PragmataPro is my daily driver, and anything else feels way too expansive.
Default Iosevka is close, but the leading is much larger. Luckily you can customize it to be almost identical (set `leading = 1110` in the config; value obtained by trial and error).
+1 for PragmataPro, bought it 4 years ago and haven't looked back yet.
Have you tried Quinze? https://www.programmingfonts.org/#quinze
I was on a quest to find the narrowest font and Quinze was the answer. It's something like 20% narrower than Iosevka and M+. I can't find an easy comparison with PragmataPro but if Iosevka is a free interpretation of PragmataPro like you mentioned then Quinze should be narrower as well.
In fact Quinze is so narrow that when I attempted to force its use in all monospace text in the browser, readability took a hit instead of improving. This is because at the same height it is much smaller than "normal" fonts. In my coding setup I use a huge font size which works great with the narrow width.
I guess the downside is that Quinze is very minimal: pretty much only ASCII, no ligature, no customization etc. None of those bother me.
Iosevka is pretty narrow and also popular. Not sure if it meets your definition, but might be worth a look.
I am a big fan of Protesilaos Stavrou's custom "Iosevka Comfy" build (https://github.com/protesilaos/iosevka-comfy). This is probably the best font ever designed to my eyes, even more than my paid version of PragmataPro.
Here is a screenshot of Iosevka Comfy in action: https://share.combo.cc/-bN9f8hAiiG
and Iosevka Comfy Motion, with tasteful serifs: https://share.combo.cc/-BNHfhV4zgu
Yeah, it is because AFAIK Iosevka is a free interpretation of PragmataPro! So you are definitely correct :D
I just discovered M+. I rather like the "60" variants, and found the default (50) width is too narrow for me. For my tastes legibility seems to suffer with the 50 variants. However, that might be narrow enough for you.
https://mplusfonts.github.io/
Speaking of condensed font, anyone has a recommendation for a good (paid or free) Serif condensed font?
I'm using "Bell MT" to replace Times in browser (and also using it for variable-pitch font in emacs Org mode), it is good but I wish it had a taller/condensed version.
Also, one of the best condensed mono font is "The Sans Mono Condensed" which first popularized by early Oreilly books (it has since switched to other mono fonts). The downside is that it only has a western character set but I liked it a lot
Try the "Recursive Mono" or "PT Mono" variants of Iosevka.