Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/

by zdw • 12 years ago

70 61 12 years ago

pcaro.es

jsd1982• 12 years ago

Looks horrendous according to the sample images.

astrodust• 12 years ago

Sample images should be the first thing you show when talking about a font. Instead it's just text?

bubblicious• 12 years ago

It probably took a lot of work to do so I'm not going to bash this... But somehow I feel that the letters are not round enough for my eyes to easily flow from one letter to the other. But then again I don't have the best eyes either so hopefully it's useful to some other devs.

vmiroshnikov• 12 years ago

Why author choose to make it look like this?

For instance, I prefer Menlo font and find it much better looking than Hermit.

itistoday2• 12 years ago

Menlo is my favorite too. :)

Tried others (including this one), but keep coming back to it. I have it set to 14pt in Sublime Text.

yaph• 12 years ago

First I scrolled past the Samples section and thought where can I see the font. I suggest to show a sample right at the top, there is enough space right next to the table of contents.

ICWiener• 12 years ago

Thanks, it is always nice to see a monospaced font available. I especially like the light version. I also like the fact that symbols that look similar (e.g. "1lI") are very distinct from each others.

gearoidoc• 12 years ago

Not exactly the best name for changing the programmer stereotype...

killerdhmo3• 12 years ago

Repost from a year ago, link to existing discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6354396

Including the comment I was about to type before I realized it had already been written:

"I hate to say this, but a font by a programmer makes as much sense as a database library by a font designer. Good font design is not about calculations or following principled rules; it's about what looks good to the eye, and it takes a tremendous amount of skill and experience. And to my eye, at least, the font is incredibly difficult to read. It literally looks like a font designed by an engineer for a plotter, not something designed for the human eye or legibility. Good fonts follow intuitive rhythms, they focus on word shapes (not just letter shapes), natural curves, there's a tremendous amount of subtlety that goes into achieving a proper sense of balance between letterforms, and a lot of things are actually different between letters/curves/etc. so that they look the same to the eye in the end. Even with "utilitarian" fonts like monospace ones. "Carefully planned and calculated" is a great recipe for building a bridge, but not for building a font, unfortunately."

tinco• 12 years ago

"Wow, that's a boring attitude."

My response to your quote had also already been written, isn't this a convenient day?

killerdhmo3• 12 years ago

"Sorry if I come across as too negative -- I definitely 100% support people trying out new things." I just don't think that the byline "for programmers by programmers" is a good one. It was not meant to be an evaluation of the typeface itself.

nraynaud• 12 years ago

I was just thinking the same stuff: "heart surgery for developers, by developers".

a-nikolaev2• 12 years ago

Just curious, what would you say about this font sample: http://i.imgur.com/DSXqMCZ.png ? (It's a modification of Terminus, with smaller letter height to have a bit more whitespace between the lines)

danudey• 12 years ago

I'm not the person you're replying to, but my answer: dizzying and illegible.

aeflash• 12 years ago

Individual characters can be made out, but words are hard to read. Not enough separation between letters and symbols, so constructs like "(pred=%i)\t" are harder to visually parse. I'm also not a fan of aliased pixel fonts -- it really exacerbates the picket-fence effect while reading.

Here's what your code sample looks like in Source Code Pro:

http://i.imgur.com/uAknyGB.png

Smaller font:

http://i.imgur.com/m0p17tm.png

Notice how all letters take up the full horizontal width so words clump together. It's easy to see that a space is a space, and not just an "i" next to an "l"

It's also worth noting that I had to try 3 separate OCR processors with your sample before I got one that didn't output complete garbage.

Curmudgel• 12 years ago

the font is incredibly difficult to read.

"Fonts" are computer code. Typefaces are what you see, unless you're editing the font that will set the type on your screen.

killerdhmo3• 12 years ago

From the wiki on Font:

In modern usage, with the advent of digital typography, "font" is frequently synonymous with "typeface". In particular, the use of "vector" or "outline" fonts means that different sizes of a typeface can be dynamically generated from one design. Each style may still be in a separate "font file"—for instance, the typeface "Bulmer" may include the fonts "Bulmer roman", "Bulmer italic", "Bulmer bold" and "Bulmer extended"—but the term "font" might be applied either to one of these alone or to the whole typeface.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font

While I appreciate your semantic formalism, considering that my fonts are collected and managed in my Font Book rather than my Typeface book, I think you've lost that battle, for now.

jarin2• 12 years ago

Every time I learn about a new programmer font, I try it for a day. It makes me sad that I apparently will never find one I like better than Inconsolata.

rolfvandekrol• 12 years ago

I had the same thing, until I found Source Code Pro from Adobe. https://github.com/adobe/source-code-pro

Yes, that's right. An open source font by Adobe. It's absolutely gorgeous!

floatboth2• 12 years ago

I switched to Fira Mono from Mozilla. It's kinda similar, and I like Source Code Pro too, but I like Fira Mono a bit more :-)

jarin2• 12 years ago

Ok, I've given Source Code Pro about a week and I gotta say I dig it.

OutThisLife4• 12 years ago

`Ubuntu Mono` is amazing.

bithush2• 12 years ago

Yeah Ubuntu Mono is lovely. On OS X I really like Source Code Pro but it looks pretty naff on Windows I have found, shame really as I love that font!

Kerrick• 12 years ago

I've been using Fira Sans Mono [0] since Mozilla released it, I love it. It's worth a try. https://i.imgur.com/h9yXXdx.png

[0] https://mozilla.github.io/Fira/

jdpage• 12 years ago

While I like this (for reasons that others have already mentioned), the lack of an italic version is a bit of a killer for me, along with the lack of full latin-1 support.

If you haven't seen it yet, Fantasque Sans Mono (formerly Cosmic Sans Neue) is my current favourite. It's worth checking out. http://openfontlibrary.org/en/font/fantasque-sans-mono

bagosm• 12 years ago

Because to my eyes aren't trained, I really can't tell any font better than any other. I am mostly used to visual studio's default but I adopt to others equally efficiently without any real hindrance to my work.

So, anyone care to explain why a font is better than another or is it just a "feel" you get that you like one over the others?

Raphmedia• 12 years ago

Easy to read at small sizes so you can have a lot of code. 1 and i are not similar. 0 and O are different. Looks good as white on black (or bright on black anyway). Spacing between the letters is correct for use in code. Etc.

frogpelt• 12 years ago

Were you able to get this to work in Visual Studio?

hkon• 12 years ago

Tip for the one who created that font, display the font samples in an image or sample text immediately. All I care about is the looks. Did not immediately see where I could see an example so I just moved on to writing this feedback comment, and now I'm done with this post. Next!

klodolph• 12 years ago

You literally have to scroll down to the "Samples" section to see font samples. Then you come in the comments to tell everyone how lazy you are.

ctdonath• 12 years ago

No, you literally have to scroll down to the "below-the-fold" Samples section, read the terse description, and click in and out of several links to see samples.

Point is: the very first thing anyone going to that page to see that font is going to want to see is that font. Most are going to expect the text of the page in that font, or at least a suitable sample first. As is, the text seen is in some non-standard (AFAIK) font which piques interest as the reader studies its subtleties, wondering how code would look in it ... then after a nontrivial time reading, discovered the links to samples, and is startled to see something completely different (and, IMHO, kinda "squashed").

A newspaper doesn't put the #1 headline on a page referenced below-the-fold.

shitgoose• 12 years ago

A bit old-fashioned. Easy to read. I like it (just switched my Eclipse to it). Thanks!

gizmodo59• 12 years ago

I ll stick with Consolas.

alokyadav15• 12 years ago

source code pro and Bitstream Vera Sans are my favourite

screenshot https://mediacru.sh/ce42e42abe27

dangayle• 12 years ago

The phrase "A font for programmer, by a programmer" is a disservice to the many fine folks at Adobe and elsewhere who manage to not only be type designers, but also programmers. There's a lot of code that goes into making a good font. (Little known fact: Just van Rossum, type designer and programmer, is the brother of the Python BDFL Guido van Rossum.)

All that to say, Adobe's Source Code Pro could also be called a font for programmers, by programmers.

maxk42• 12 years ago

I know that a sans-serif font looks all slick and modern, but those serifs in Courier New help your eye identify the character more readily and improve readability. Any monospace font without serifs is automatically a no-go for me when it comes to programming.

rbanffy• 12 years ago

I find the rounded r's and n's a little bit difficult to negotiate, especially at smaller point sizes - while aesthetically pleasing, it makes the font harder to read. When I program, I want all my neurons available to coding. Also, the horizontal bar in f is on a different height than the one on the t. This makes it noisy.

Having said that, I applaud a developer committed enough to make "the perfect editor font" just as much as I applaud those who, via their config scripts and plugins, shape vim or emacs into their own perfect text editors.

Also, he managed to make his font work on WIndows. I never did it with mine (https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font)

floatboth2• 12 years ago

I don't think the r in this typeface is aesthetically pleasing :(

OutThisLife4• 12 years ago

Is it supposed to look this bad? http://d.pr/i/XCGR

atmosx2• 12 years ago

Please, use http://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html

my eyes hurt :-)

elsavier• 12 years ago

Pages about fonts should be written in the target font. On that note, what font is the page about the font in? I wish there were a fixed-width version of that font.

_kst_• 12 years ago

The one thing that jumped out at me is that I find the parentheses too strongly curved, so much so it may be difficult to distinguish between '(' and 'C'.

It's hard to tell because there are no 'C's in the samples; more upper case and mixed case text would be helpful.

vinkelhake• 12 years ago

I recommend PragmataPro. Once I found it, I knew I didn't have to look for another programming font again.

sj4nz• 12 years ago

For those looking... http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragmatapro.htm

magerleagues• 12 years ago

I'm using Yosemite on Mac and I'm loving the Osaka font.

Screenshot: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/3a95a8a8-978a-4371-8411...

micampe• 12 years ago

I’m pretty sure that’s just Monaco.

schrodinger• 12 years ago

Watch out, if a value with single quotes is passed into updateVal, you're screwed!

Why not do:

    $(current).append(
      $('<input class="editing" type="text"/>').val(value));

OutThisLife4• 12 years ago

That font size is so big! Am I alone w/ preferring 9pt http://d.pr/i/NDUU?

bithush2• 12 years ago

Nice theme. You mind sharing?

falsedan• 12 years ago

If you are interested in seeing a long list of monospace fonts ranked by votes with samples on one page, please check out http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming....

turrini• 12 years ago

Thanks, but I will stick with Terminus Font:

http://terminus-font.sourceforge.net/shots.html

vorporeal• 12 years ago

Same, I use Terminus at 8pt as my terminal font, and it's fantastic - dense yet readable.

Tloewald• 12 years ago

It seems to me that he has gone to enormous lengths to use consistent pieces to make letters (as befits a programmer -- DRY design), which makes them all look very samish, hurting readability. I think a better approach would be to figure out how to make the glyphs seem more distinct without being inconsistent or ugly.

Tiksi• 12 years ago

I struggled for a long time to find a font that looks good even when it's tiny and subpixel smoothing isn't very effective. I've pretty much settled on tamsyn: http://www.fial.com/~scott/tamsyn-font/

It's not "pretty" but I find it the most useful and visually appealing. The only downside is that not everything works properly with bitmap fonts.

atmosx2• 12 years ago

Good to know the author intends to add Greek characters. Until then, for me it's a no-no :-(. Since VIM is my default editor, I need Greek chars in terminal.

Timmmmbob• 12 years ago

Looks kind of blurry.

rdvrk• 12 years ago

I admire the effort that went into this. As anyone who ever tried creating a font knows, it's really tough putting it all together.

It's not _that_ bad at 12pt, but all that's wrong with the font really shows with smaller sizes. Stroke weights are inconsistent, eyes too small. The font was meant to be "clear, pragmatic and very readable". Right now, it's none of these.

Technical problems can be solved, and the font will look good to some. I don't like it, but that's just a matter of taste. Layman's opinion on aesthetics can only have statistical value (and it's questionable if professional's opinion should be valued more).

What really bothers me is pretentiousness of the first paragraph. Basically, "everything was meant to be great, so it is". That - along with a todo that says nothing about fixing flaws, but dreams of having cyrillic, greek, unicode - is the biggest problem of all.

Fixing that first would go a long way toward making this a newsworthy item and a font to keep an eye on.

qq66• 12 years ago

It has an interesting look, but it's not something I'd personally use on a daily basis.

Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

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