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Q: Ligatures in Programming Fonts? A: Hell No

posted by Fnord666 on Monday July 24 2017, @03:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-no-but-... dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Ligatures in programming fonts — a misguided trend I was hoping would collapse under its own illogic. But several readers have already sent me this new argument in favor.

Let me save you some time:

Ligatures in programming fonts are a terrible idea.

And not because I’m a purist or a grump. (Some days, but not today.) Programming code has special semantic considerations. Ligatures in programming fonts are likely to either misrepresent the meaning of the code, or cause miscues among readers. So in the end, even if they’re cute, the risk of error isn’t worth it.

There are good reasons we have Unicode and this is NOT one of them.

Source: http://tinyletter.com/mbutterick/letters/q-ligatures-in-programming-fonts-a-hell-no

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @09:36AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @09:36AM (#543620)

    Precisely, hipster "thinking". Must be the same guys that work on Gnome3 "apps" and mess up programs that worked just fine before. Ah, and of course: "systemd" as exhibit A (though its technically exhibit B as pulseaudio is exhibit A, predating the systemd abortion).

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @02:07PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @02:07PM (#543686)

    predating the systemd abortion

    Freudian slip? As much as you'd like it, systemd has not been aborted. Quite the opposite: This abomination is still very alive.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @03:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @03:12PM (#543722)

      It's a pejorative. See meaning #6. [dictionary.com]