Comment by goatking
5 days ago
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/
I've had the Berkeley Mono trial on my system for a while now and tried it every so often when I changed up my terminal/editor themes, but it never quite clicked with me. I tried Ioskeley and I personally prefer the way it looks on my code. There are enough differences that I'd call it a bad clone if that were the intention, but a good font if you generally like how Berkeley Mono looks but want something different.
(Note: I have paid for fonts before and wouldn't hesitate to buy a coding font if it fit my preferences)
It's the first time I see any of these fonts and I'm more of a bitmap font type but one difference is the parentheses are much more readable in the Ioskeley clone than in the rounded-corner–brackets Berkeley.
Wow. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, indeed.
Wow. So Gorgeous ! Thanks for sharing this
This is even better than Berkeley Mono!
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 !
Fair enough. With super-compiler add-on, I believe you can adjust the angle of the italics.
I faintly remember about the though process of italics, but I don't remember it now. They don't look uncomfortable to me, anyway.
Iosevka variant SS14 is a JetBrains Mono-like. Currently my favorite!
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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.
It's designed to look like a font from that era, to be honest. It also reminds me some of the older computers I used. Some typewriter, maybe a real VT320 or the older DOS systems I used.
It's a modern yet period correct version of these older fonts, with proper character set support and love for details. It's so perfect for me, it becomes invisible, or as the Berkeley's page says: "It's boring. It's good"*.
Or as I mailed the creator after using it a couple of weeks: "It's so perfect that it transported all my computers to 70s, in a good way".
*: When I was writing this comment, I wondered whether I really set my browser's monospace font to Berkeley. It becomes that transparent after a while.
wow i love it! 225 bucks for a font though is bonkers
If you like Berkeley Mono but don't want to pay, here's an Iosevka configuration that attempts to mimic it as closely as possible. https://ahatem.github.io/IoskeleyMono/
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I first bought it for $75, then the updates came. I also got them when they came out, but I don't remember the price.
You can start with $75 package and work your way up if you feel like you need them.
What am I missing: here it lists as SIL OFL [0]
[0] https://www.programmingfonts.org/#iosevka
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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™"?
Use the Iosevka customizer at the page above and it’s the first option listed.
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