Typography thread

What's everyone using for their sans (UI) and monospace (terminal, text editor) fonts these days? I mean on their GNU/Linux systems, of course. Also: which level of hinting, and any unusual customizations (such as Infinality)?

Personally, I've been using Fira Sans and Fira Mono (switching to Fira Code for software that supports ligatures) for the past year, with slight hinting and "lcddefault", and I've gotten quite used to them.

I use Dejavu Sans Mono, as its so clear and I can easily distinguish 1/I/l and O/0.

Originally Posted by DavidMcCann I use Dejavu Sans Mono, as its so clear and I can easily distinguish 1/I/l and O/0.

Wait. Are you saying that with that font, you can actually see whether something is talking about OpenAL and OpenAI?

Originally Posted by dugan Wait. Are you saying that with that font, you can actually see whether something is talking about OpenAL and OpenAI?

No: that capital I, lower-case l, and numeral 1 are all different, and that zero has a dot in the middle. That's very useful when dealing with product numbers and post-codes, etc.

in konsol and for fixed space i use "hack" ,the lowercase i has a has a DOT on top
a zoom in on a matlab script in VI
-- see attachment

Monospace normal 11 in GUI text editors, misc fixed 20 in rxvt, xterm

Originally Posted by keefaz Monospace normal 11 in GUI text editors, misc fixed 20 in rxvt, xterm

Do you know which font you have "Monospace" as an alias to?

Font rendering stuff: lcddefault, slight hinting. I have yet to upgrade to anything like a retina display.

Fonts: DejaVu (sans|serif|mono). They've always been available on any given distribution I use, and they look pretty good. If I'm adventurous then I'll use one of: Hack, Source Code Pro, Terminus, Ubuntu Mono.

here is my complete ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>

<!-- CAREFUL!
USER CONFIGURATION PRIORITY RAISED FROM 50- TO 21- 
IN /etc/fonts/conf.d -->

<!-- Generic name aliasing -->
<alias>
	<family>sans</family>
	<prefer>
		<family>Noto Sans</family>
	</prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
	<family>sans-serif</family>
	<prefer>
		<family>Noto Sans</family>
	</prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
	<family>serif</family>
	<prefer>
		<family>Noto Serif</family>
	</prefer>
</alias>
<alias binding="same">
	<family>monospace</family>
	<accept>
		<family>xos4 Terminus</family>
		<family>Terminus</family>
	</accept>
</alias>

<!-- Bitstream Charter is a non true type font, and will look bad. This
replaces it with whatever is the default sans-serif font -->
<match target="pattern">
	<test name="family" qual="any">
		<string>Bitstream Charter</string>
	</test>
	<edit mode="assign" name="family" binding="same">
		<string>sans-serif</string>
	</edit>
</match>

<!-- Helvetica is a non true type font, and will look bad. This
replaces it with whatever is the default sans-serif font -->
<match target="pattern">
	<test name="family" qual="any">
		<string>Helvetica</string>
	</test>
	<edit mode="assign" name="family">
		<string>sans-serif</string>
	</edit>
</match>

<match target="font">
	<edit name="lcdfilter" mode="assign">
		<const>lcdlight</const>
	</edit>
</match>

<!--
Interesting! This one overrides EVERYTHING
<match target="pattern">
    <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="strong">
        <string>Comic Sans MS</string>
    </edit>
</match>
-->

</fontconfig>

there's some more customisation on system level; e.g. comic sans is replaced with a very pleasant typeface called Signika iirc.
i applied these after infinality became obsolete in archlinux: https://gist.github.com/cryzed/e002e...894b9e748c5671

terminus with Xterm, and this is in my ~/.Xdefaults

XTerm*font: -*-terminus-bold-r-normal-*-22-*-*-*-*-*-*-* XTerm*menuLocale*font: -*-terminus-bold-r-normal-*-28-*-*-*-*-*-*-* XTerm.vt100.font: -*-terminus-medium-r-normal-*-32-*-*-*-*-*-*-* XTerm.VT100.font1: -*-terminus-bold-r-normal-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-*-* XTerm.VT100.font2: -*-terminus-bold-r-normal-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-* XTerm.VT100.font3: -*-terminus-bold-r-normal-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-*-* XTerm.VT100.font4: -*-terminus-bold-r-normal-*-20-*-*-*-*-*-*-* XTerm.VT100.font5: -*-terminus-bold-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-*-* XTerm.VT100.font6: -*-terminus-medium-r-normal-*-32-*-*-*-*-*-*-*