Comment by wartywhoa23
5 days ago
Iosevka, my absolutely most loved font for years!
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...
I am happy it works for you. I am always surprised how much this font is praised, then I try it, and just completely unreadable for me.
I tried it again, quickly set it up in my terminal the "Iosevka Term" version, switching from Jetbrains Mono, and just don't understand how can people read this.
I drove a version of this for a fairly long time, remembering downloading it from GitHub page, not from the customizer. It's not a bad font by any means. I enjoyed Iosevka a lot while I used it.
But, after using Berkeley Mono for three minutes, I switched to it everywhere in a week or so, and never looked back, or looked anywhere else, to be precise.
Yes, it's not free, and yes it's opinionated. I can say that my opinions align with that font pretty much. It's one of the things which I cherish like an expensive hand tool which really does its job very well and makes you happy with its presence.
[0]: https://usgraphics.com/products/berkeley-mono
Here's an Iosevka config that mimics Berkeley Mono for those who don't want to or can't pay money for it. https://ahatem.github.io/IoskeleyMono/
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Funny enough I paid for Berkeley Mono but its italic is just not up to it (and particularly not to the price). Iosevka Mono has very nice glyphs but just way too narrow for my taste. JetBrains Mono, IBM Plex Mono (or Lilex) or Roboto Mono just seem to work much better for my tired eyes !
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Looks like the daisywheel typeface that one of the old ACT Sirius Ones at my dad's old work used to use.
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wow i love it! 225 bucks for a font though is bonkers
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To suggest an odd thing, you might try repeating your tests with the customized set to a single weight — either higher or lower than the default 500 that most programs would use. Berkeley for high-PPI displays is at 450 rather than 500 and looks better for it. (I’m on the Berkeley ship and there are flaws in Iosevka that would see me select Monaco over it, but I’m also a fan of For Science™.)
Do you have a link for "For Science™"?
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A huge helping of praise gets lumped onto Iosevka, from me, for the way it is defined in a custom S-expression DSL.
https://github.com/be5invis/PatEL
It’s a real hackers typeface.
IoSevka->IoSif->Stalin->Stallman->emacS->eliSp->S-expression
The reason it's so popular is it was (one of?) the first fonts to include tons of programming ligatures. So it gained mindshare early, and since font choices are so personal, the more people use a font, the more people will like and post about it.
Its narrower width definitely takes some getting used. It wasn’t until the third revisit that it clicked for me. I realized I could fit more text in my terminal panes while keeping font size the same. Running one or more coding agents in every terminal window also had something to do with it.
Once, I also couldn't fathom how people liked this one.
When I asked, somebody said it fits more characters in terminals and code editors. This sounds incredibly obvious, but for whatever reason that was eye-opening for me and helped me appreciate it a lot more when I tried it again. Now I can't use anything else.
Iosevka is very configurable and have many options for font and individual glyphs. Build supports text file config. At some point I made a config so I can always get preferred setup. It works well for me
I'm also not a fan of the narrow width, but there is an "extended" width version that's more like other mono fonts, which is what I personally use, albeit customized.
Truth is it requires getting used to, I don't even notice it's narrow anymore, but it was so painful throughout the first day
Jetbrains Mono Thin and Roboto Condensed make an excellent pair.
Give it a week
Iosevka and its family are a true masterpiece. I used it as my main primary monospaced font since it's so clean and pleasing to the eye.
I now switched to Ioskeley Mono, which is an Iosevka configuration made to look similar to Berkeley Mono:
https://github.com/ahatem/IoskeleyMono
Either the Iosevka originals or Ioskeley are gorgeous fonts. I'm grateful to its creator.
Same, I went from being die hard Terminus fan to this. Been a long time daily driver.
Yep. :waves: to ones on similar path.. Switching off from Terminus was hard, but eventually unavoidable. Switched to Jetbrains Mono when Ghostty came out nearly 2 years ago..
oh man I used Terminus for so long till my finger hurt ... recently I was very happy with Cascadia Mono but now I've migrated to (as I was saying in another thread) Pragmasevka (derivative of Iosevka that mimics Pragmata Pro). It's really great.
I love it as I can customize it to match the metrics and weights of my main font on web pages. See here for me: https://github.com/vincentbernat/vincent.bernat.ch/blob/main....
> ttf (or better yet, ttc)
Why is ttc better?
It's a package of ttfs, simpler to have all in one file on disk as well as install from one. Customization can generate a lot of font varieties.
I often have difficulties when trying to install .ttc's on Windows 11. I don't know why.
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That explains all of the .ptl source files, which I didn't recognize straightaway.
Would be curious to see your custom version
Here you go:
https://pastebin.com/WwYY0QqX
Copy and paste into Import Configuration at https://typeof.net/Iosevka/customizer to preview.
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I see you, my friend!
Thank you! Being shadow-banned is worse than being banned :D.