31adb247e5
All features that were not already in their own files were pulled out of
FiraCode.glyphs into individual files. There is no way I will write
a parser for the glyphs file to do that at runtime. The build script
will then read the code in these feature files and appends it to the
`calt` property inside the glyphs file. Features to be baked in can be
given to build.sh as a comma separated list with the `-f / --features`
flag.
To more easily generate multiple font versions with different features
baked in, there are flags `-n / --family-name` for build.sh that will
allow users to set a custom family name for the font. The special value
"features" will append the feature list to the font name. The family
name is exported and used by the other build scripts as a directory to
separate different font versions. The filenames were not changed, the
directory name is enough separation.
The flag `-g / --generate-glyphs-only` will cause the script to exit
after the custom glyphs file has been created without actually building
the font. The custom .glyphs file will be saved as
`${family_name}.glyphs`.
Via another flag, `-w / --weights`, a comma separated list of font
weights to be generated can be given to build.sh.
The README received a hint to the new capabilities.
Fixed a mixup of cv25 and cv32.
The .gitignore was adjusted to better deal with the new directories and
files.
12 KiB
Fira Code: free monospaced font with programming ligatures
Problem
Programmers use a lot of symbols, often encoded with several characters. For the human brain, sequences like ->, <= or := are single logical tokens, even if they take two or three characters on the screen. Your eye spends a non-zero amount of energy to scan, parse and join multiple characters into a single logical one. Ideally, all programming languages should be designed with full-fledged Unicode symbols for operators, but that’s not the case yet.
Solution
Fira Code is a free monospaced font containing ligatures for common programming multi-character combinations. This is just a font rendering feature: underlying code remains ASCII-compatible. This helps to read and understand code faster. For some frequent sequences like .. or //, ligatures allow us to correct spacing.
Download & Install
Then:
Sponsors
Fira Code is a personal, free-time project with no funding and a huge feature request backlog. If you love it, consider supporting its development via GitHub Sponsors or Patreon. Any help counts!
Huge thanks to:
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|
What’s in the box?
Left: ligatures as rendered in Fira Code. Right: same character sequences without ligatures.
Fira Code comes with a huge variety of arrows. Even better: you can make them as long as you like and combine start/middle/end fragments however you want!
Fira Code is not only about ligatures. Some fine-tuning is done for punctuation and frequent letter pairs.
Fira Code comes with a few different character variants, so that everyone can choose what’s best for them. How to enable
Some ligatures can be altered or enabled using stylistic sets/character variants:
Being a programming font, Fira Code has fantastic support for ASCII/box drawing, powerline and other forms of console UIs:
Fira Code is the first programming font to offer dedicated glyphs to render progress bars:
In action:
We hope more programming fonts will adopt this convention and ship their own versions.
Unicode coverage makes Fira Code a great choice for mathematical writing:
How does it look?
Editor compatibility list
| Works | Doesn’t work |
|---|---|
| Abricotine | Arduino IDE |
| Android Studio (2.3+, instructions) | Adobe Dreamweaver |
| Anjuta (unless at the EOF) | Delphi IDE |
| AppCode (2016.2+, instructions) | Standalone Emacs (workaround) |
| Atom 1.1 or newer (instructions) | Godot (issue) |
| BBEdit/TextWrangler (v. 11 only, instructions) | IDLE |
| Brackets (with this plugin) | KDevelop 4 |
| Chocolat | Monkey Studio IDE |
| CLion (2016.2+, instructions) | UltraEdit |
| Cloud9 (instructions) | |
| Coda 2 | |
| CodeLite | |
| CodeRunner | |
| CotEditor | |
| Eclipse | |
| elementary Code | |
| Geany (1.37+) | |
| gEdit / Pluma | |
| GNOME Builder | |
| GoormIDE (instructions) | |
| gVim (Windows, GTK) | |
| IntelliJ IDEA (2016.2+, instructions) | |
| Kate, KWrite | |
| KDevelop 5+ | |
| Komodo | |
| Leafpad | |
| LibreOffice | |
| LightTable (instructions) | |
| LINQPad | |
| MacVim 7.4 or newer (instructions) | |
| Mancy | |
| MATLAB (instructions) | |
| Meld | |
| Mousepad | |
| NeoVim-gtk | |
| NetBeans | |
| Notepad (Windows) | |
| Notepad++ (with a workaround) | |
| Notepad3 (instructions) | |
| Nova | |
| PhpStorm (2016.2+, instructions) | |
| PyCharm (2016.2+, instructions) | |
| QOwnNotes (21.16.6+) | |
| QtCreator | |
| Rider | |
| RStudio (instructions) | |
| RubyMine (2016.2+, instructions) | |
| Scratch | |
| Scribus (1.5.3+) | |
| SublimeText (3146+) | |
| Spyder IDE (only with Qt5) | |
| SuperCollider 3 | |
| TeXShop | |
| TextAdept (Linux, macOS) | |
| TextEdit | |
| TextMate 2 | |
| VimR (instructions) | |
| Visual Studio (2015+, instructions) | |
| Visual Studio Code (instructions) | |
| WebStorm (2016.2+, instructions) | |
| Xamarin Studio/Monodevelop | |
| Xcode (8.0+, otherwise with plugin) | |
| Xi | |
| Probably work: Smultron, Vico | Under question: Code::Blocks IDE |
Terminal compatibility list
| Platform | Works | Doesn’t work |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | Hyper (see #3607) iTerm 2 Kitty Terminal.app ZOC |
Alacritty |
| Windows | Hyper (see #3607) Mintty Token2Shell Windows Terminal |
Alacritty Cmder ConEmu PuTTY Windows Console ZOC |
| Linux | Hyper (see #3607) Kitty Konsole QTerminal Termux st (patch) |
Alacritty GNOME Terminal libvte-based terminals (bug report):
rxvt terminology xterm |
| ChromeOS | crosh (instructions) |
Browser support
<!-- HTML -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/firacode@6.2.0/distr/fira_code.css">
/* CSS */
@import url(https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/firacode@6.2.0/distr/fira_code.css);
/* Specify in CSS */
code { font-family: 'Fira Code', monospace; }
@supports (font-variation-settings: normal) {
code { font-family: 'Fira Code VF', monospace; }
}
- IE 10+, Edge Legacy: enable with
font-feature-settings: "calt"; - Firefox
- Safari
- Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Opera)
- ACE
- CodeMirror (enable with
font-variant-ligatures: contextual;)
Projects using Fira Code
Alternatives
Free monospaced fonts with ligatures:
Paid monospaced fonts with ligatures:
Building Fira Code locally
In case you want to alter FiraCode.glyphs and build OTF/TTF/WOFF files yourself, this is the setup I use on macOS:
# install all required build tools
./script/bootstrap_macos.sh
# build the font files
./script/build.sh
# install OTFs to ~/Library/Fonts
cp distr/otf/*.otf ~/Library/Fonts
Alternatively, you can build Fira Code using Docker:
# install dependencies in a container and build the font files
make
# package the font files from dist/ into a zip
make package
If you want to permanently enable certain style sets or character variations, maybe because your editor of choice does not allow you to toggle these individually, you can provide the desired features as a comma separated list to the build script via the -f / --features flag.
Default: none.
To separate different versions of your font you can specify the desired font family name with the -n / --family-name flag. The special value 'features' will append a sorted, space separated list of enabled features to the default family name.
Default: "Fira Code"
You can also limit the font weights that will be created with the -w / --weights option.
Default: "Light,Regular,Retina,Medium,SemiBold,Bold"
# locally in your shell
./script/build.sh --features "ss02,ss08,ss10,cv03,cv07,cv14" --family-name "Fira Code straight" --weights "Regular,Bold"
# or via a docker container (creates the family name 'Fira Code cv01 cv02 cv06 cv31 onum ss01 ss03 ss04 zero')
docker run --rm -v "${PWD}":/opt tonsky/firacode:latest ./script/build.sh -f "cv01,cv02,cv06,ss01,zero,onum,ss03,ss04,cv31" -n "features"
Credits
- Author: Nikita Prokopov @nikitonsky
- Based on: Fira Mono
- Inspired by: Hasklig