7.0 KiB
Fira Code: 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
Download v1.204 · How to install · Troubleshooting · News & updates
Fira Code is an extension of the Fira Mono font containing a set of 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.
![](/tonsky/FiraCode/media/commit/b6918c4e054f1f42d507928f14ccb9426a9573e6/showcases/all_ligatures.png)
Code examples
Ruby:
![](/tonsky/FiraCode/media/commit/b6918c4e054f1f42d507928f14ccb9426a9573e6/showcases/ruby.png)
JavaScript:
![](/tonsky/FiraCode/media/commit/b6918c4e054f1f42d507928f14ccb9426a9573e6/showcases/javascript.png)
PHP:
![](/tonsky/FiraCode/media/commit/b6918c4e054f1f42d507928f14ccb9426a9573e6/showcases/php.png)
Erlang:
![](/tonsky/FiraCode/media/commit/b6918c4e054f1f42d507928f14ccb9426a9573e6/showcases/erlang.png)
Elixir:
![](/showcases/elixir.png)
Go:
![](/tonsky/FiraCode/media/commit/b6918c4e054f1f42d507928f14ccb9426a9573e6/showcases/go.png)
LiveScript:
![](/tonsky/FiraCode/media/commit/b6918c4e054f1f42d507928f14ccb9426a9573e6/showcases/livescript.png)
Clojure:
![](/tonsky/FiraCode/media/commit/b6918c4e054f1f42d507928f14ccb9426a9573e6/showcases/clojure.png)
Swift:
![](/tonsky/FiraCode/media/commit/b6918c4e054f1f42d507928f14ccb9426a9573e6/showcases/swift.png)
Terminal support
Works | Doesn’t work |
---|---|
Butterfly | Alacritty |
Hyper.app | cmd.exe |
iTerm 2 (since 3.1) | Cmder |
Kitty | ConEmu |
Konsole | GNOME Terminal |
QTerminal | mate-terminal |
Terminal.app | mintty |
Termux | PuTTY |
Token2Shell/MD | rxvt |
upterm | ZOC (Windows) |
ZOC (macOS) | gtkterm, guake, LXTerminal, sakura, Terminator, xfce4-terminal, and other libvte-based terminals (bug report) |
Editor support
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) | Eclipse (Win, vote here) |
Atom 1.1 or newer (instructions) | Standalone Emacs (workaround) |
BBEdit/TextWrangler (v. 11 only, instructions) | gVim (Windows workaround) |
Brackets (with this plugin) | IDLE |
Chocolat | KDevelop 4 |
CLion (2016.2+, instructions) | Monkey Studio IDE |
Cloud9 (instructions) | |
Coda 2 | |
CodeLite | |
Eclipse (Mac 4.7+, Linux) | |
Geany | |
gEdit / Pluma | |
GNOME Builder | |
IntelliJ IDEA (2016.2+, instructions) | |
Kate, KWrite | |
Komodo | |
Leafpad | |
LibreOffice | |
LightTable (instructions) | |
LINQPad | |
MacVim 7.4 or newer (instructions) | |
Mancy | |
Meld | |
Mousepad | |
NetBeans | |
Notepad (Win) | |
Notepad++ (with a workaround) | |
PhpStorm (2016.2+, instructions) | |
PyCharm (2016.2+, instructions) | |
QtCreator | |
Rider | |
RStudio (instructions) | |
RubyMine (2016.2+, instructions) | |
Scratch | |
SublimeText (3146+) | |
Spyder IDE (only with Qt5) | |
SuperCollider 3 | |
TextAdept (Linux, Mac) | |
TextEdit | |
TextMate 2 | |
VimR (instructions) | |
Visual Studio 2015 | |
Visual Studio 2017 | |
Visual Studio Code (instructions) | |
WebStorm (2016.2+, instructions) | |
Xamarin Studio/Monodevelop | |
Xcode (8.0+, otherwise with plugin) | |
Probably work: Smultron, Vico | Under question: Code::Blocks IDE |
Browser support
<!-- HTML -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.rawgit.com/tonsky/FiraCode/1.204/distr/fira_code.css">
/* CSS */
@import url(https://cdn.rawgit.com/tonsky/FiraCode/1.204/distr/fira_code.css);
- IE 10+, Edge: enable with
font-feature-settings: "calt" 1;
- Firefox
- Safari
- Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Opera)
- ACE
- CodeMirror (enable with
font-variant-ligatures: contextual;
)
Projects using Fira Code
Alternatives
Other monospaced fonts with ligatures:
- Hasklig (free)
- PragmataPro (€59)
- Monoid (free)
- Fixedsys Excelsior (free)
- Iosevka (free)
- DejaVu Sans Code (free)
Credits
- Author: Nikita Prokopov @nikitonsky
- Based on: Fira Mono
- Inspired by: Hasklig
- Software: Glyphs 2 (thx Georg Seifert for a license)