monaspace README

The project's README from github.com/githubnext/monaspace. As one markdown file: README.md.

Monaspace

The Monaspace type system is a monospaced type superfamily with some modern tricks up its sleeve. It consists of five variable axis typefaces. Each one has a distinct voice, but they are all metrics-compatible with one another, allowing you to mix and match them for a more expressive typographical palette.

Letters on a grid is how we see our code. Why not make those letters better?

✨ An exploration from GitHub Next. ✨ See the full story of Monaspace at monaspace.githubnext.com.

🔤 Download the latest release 🔤

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Overview

Monaspace is five interchangable type families, each of which is packaged into three distinct formats. You can install all of them side-by-side; their family names are distinct by family and format. For example:

The variable fonts have one file per family (Neon, Argon, etc.). Modern and convenient!

The static fonts have one file per cut, per family. The variable axes have named stops for each axis, like light or bold for weight, italic for italics, and semiwide or wide for width. The combinatorial explosion of all these properties means the complete installation of static fonts involves hundreds of font files. But for situations that don't yet support variable fonts, the static builds give you a wide variety of stops throughout the range of each axis.

Texture Healing

Monaspace pioneered the technique of "texture healing" for monospaced fonts:

Texture Healing Example

Texture healing is enabled when the calt font feature setting is turned on in your editor. The location for this setting varies across applications, and not all applications support it. See the Editors section below for specific guidance.

You can read more about how it works on the Monaspace website, and learn how it is implemented in the documentation.

Nerd Fonts

As of Monaspace 1.2, the static font builds (both desktop and web) offer versions patched with Nerd Fonts!

Monaspace gives a lot of consideration to horizontal and vertical metrics of a font, and Nerd Fonts are thousands of icons which don't necessarily respect those considerations. Monaspace makes a best-effort attempt to optically align the size and placement of the icons so that they feel compatible with the other Monaspace glyphs.

There is such a broad variety of environments and terminals and often solving for one breaks another! Some Nerd Fonts glyphs may not render correctly in every environment.

[!NOTE] Monaspace uses the Nerd Fonts implementation from Cascadia Code as our starting point. Each icon was resized to fit the max advance width of the given Monaspace font, and centered vertically between the baseline and cap height of Monaspace's vertical metrics.

Coding Ligatures

[!WARNING] Ligature handling has changed significantly in Monaspace point releases. If you're upgrading, check the release notes to learn what changes you might need to make to your editor configuration:

The liga font feature enables customized spacing of repeating characters, like /// or ||. It is designed to avoid activating inside longer sequences like ////.

There are ten groups of coding ligatures, separated into stylistic sets. You may be able to enable or disable individual sets selectively:

👉 You can see an interactive display of all the ligatures on the Monaspace website

Character Variants

Specific characters have variants that you can optionally enable using the cvNN opentype feature:

cv01-cv09: figure variants

cv10-cv29: letter variants

cv30-cv59: symbol variants

cv60-cv79: optional ligatures

cv80-cv99: reserved for future use

Special Characters Galore

In addition to the ligatures, character variants, and Nerd Fonts, Monaspace includes a wealth of special characters.

Special Characters

Desktop Installation

Upgrading

Font caching on operating systems is an inscrutable mess dating back thirty years, and not something we can fix in Monaspace. Generally speaking, you should:

Restarting is usually the only way to be 100% sure that the underlying machinery in the operating system picks up the new fonts.

MacOS

You can manually drag the fonts from the fonts/otf, fonts/variable, and fonts/frozen directories into Font Book.

There is also a script that automates the deletion of all Monaspace fonts from ~/Library/Fonts and then copies over the latest versions. Invoke it from the root of the repo like:

$ bash util/install_macos.sh

You can also use Homebrew as an alternative, though it may not always have the latest version of Monaspace.

brew install --cask font-monaspace

Windows

You can manually drag the fonts from the fonts/otf, fonts/variable, and fonts/frozen directories into C:\Windows\Fonts. Alternatively, right-click the fonts you want and click Install.

Linux

You can manually drag the fonts from the fonts/otf, fonts/variable, and fonts/frozen directories into ~/.local/share/fonts.

After doing so, it's probably wise to rebuild your font cache like so:

fc-cache -f

Webfonts

All files with a .woff or .woff2 suffix are intended for use on the web. You do not install them with your operating system but add them to your web development project.

As with the desktop fonts, they are available in variable, static, and nerdfont versions.

The webfonts do not come in a "frozen" format; you can easily control Opentype features on the web using the font-feature-settings CSS property.

Editors

Visual Studio Code

[!WARNING] Ligature handling has changed significantly in Monaspace point releases. If you're upgrading, check the release notes to learn what changes you might need to make to your editor configuration:

Set the font family:

    "editor.fontFamily": "'Monaspace Neon', monospace",

Set an alternate family for inline suggestions:

    "editor.inlineSuggest.fontFamily": "'Monaspace Krypton', monospace",

[!NOTE] Variable fonts are not yet well-supported in VS Code, and it is not yet possible to mix multiple fonts. Stay tuned, we're talking with the VS Code team about it!

You must use the editor.fontLigatures setting to enable the various features (texture healing, ligatures, and character variants). The setting is a comma-separated list of font features to be enabled.

[!NOTE] This setting is unavailable from the graphical settings editor; you must create it manually.

Putting it all together, a setting string which enables everything but the character variants would look like this:

  "editor.fontLigatures": "'calt', 'liga', 'ss01', 'ss02', 'ss03', 'ss04', 'ss05', 'ss06', 'ss07', 'ss08', 'ss09'"

Specific character variants are also enabled using the font-feature-settings syntax. To enable slashed zeroes (with cv01) and six-pointed asterisks (with cv31), you might use the following settings:

  "editor.fontLigatures": "'calt', 'liga', 'ss01', 'cv01' 2, 'cv31' 1"

Note that some character variants have several possible values. For any variants that are either on or off, setting them to 1 should enable them, and omitting the variant (or setting them to 0) will disable them.

Contribution

There's no formal contribution guide yet! If you're interested in contributing to the typefaces, you should read the Texture Healing guide, as it explains how to produce the necessary alternate glyphs.

License

SIL OFL. See LICENSE.

Support

Please file issues in this repo. Monaspace is not a supported product; do not contact GitHub support with questions, as they do not support GitHub Next explorations.

Contributors

Monaspace was made to improve all code for all developers. GitHub Next set out on this journey in 2022, and we were fortunate to find a type foundry that shares our passion for improving software in Lettermatic. The result is a marriage of form and function that opens the door to new developer experiences, and that would not have been possible without the domain expertise and skill of the Lettermatic team and the time they invested in working with GitHub Next on figuring out how typography ought to work for code.

Lettermatic

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GitHub Next

GitHub Next Logo

Special Thanks To

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monaspace (githubnext/monaspace)

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19.7K ·GitHub
Monaspace
What is this?Monaspace is a superfamily of five monospaced fonts for code, an exploration from GitHub Next designed with the type foundry Lettermatic. The five typefaces have distinct voices but identical metrics, so they can be mixed within a single editor.
Is it one font or several — and why call it a superfamily?It's five interchangeable families, each with its own voice but all metrics-compatible, so you can mix and match them in one editor. Each family ships in static, variable (VF), and Nerd Fonts (NF) builds under distinct family names, installed side by side.
How do I get the fonts onto my machine?Download the latest release and drag the fonts from fonts/otf, fonts/variable, or fonts/frozen into Font Book (macOS), the Windows Fonts folder, or ~/.local/share/fonts (Linux, then rebuild the cache with fc-cache). On macOS there's also an update script in the repo, and Homebrew works as an alternative, though it may not have the latest version.
If a new version comes out, can I just install over the old one?Better not — OS font caching is unpredictable, so the README advises deleting the old fonts first, installing the new ones, then restarting apps and possibly the whole machine. Ligature handling also changed between point releases, so editor config may need updating.
Is this for type designers, or for anyone who writes code?For anyone who writes code — the README says Monaspace was made to improve all code for all developers. It's a GitHub Next exploration rather than a supported product, so questions go to the repo's issues, not GitHub support.
Is it desktop-only, or can I use it on the web too?Both — besides macOS, Windows, and Linux installs, the release includes .woff and .woff2 webfonts in variable, static, and Nerd Fonts versions that you add to a web project. On the web you control features with the font-feature-settings CSS property, so there's no frozen web build.
Does Monaspace cost anything?No — it's free. The fonts are released under the SIL Open Font License, so you can install, use, and share them freely.
What is texture healing, the feature Monaspace is known for?It's a spacing technique for monospaced fonts that Monaspace pioneered. It's enabled when your editor turns on the calt font feature; not all applications support it, and the README points to the Monaspace website and docs for the full story.
Which ligatures and character variants are included?Ten ligature groups ship as stylistic sets — ss01 for equals-sign combos, ss03 for arrows, ss05 for F# pipes, ss07 for colons — plus character variants like slashed zeroes (cv01) and an optional closed-square [] ligature (cv61). The liga feature also spaces repeated characters like /// while staying off inside longer runs.
Is there a version with Nerd Fonts icons for my terminal?Yes — since v1.2 the static desktop and web builds come patched with Nerd Fonts: thousands of icons that don't naturally respect Monaspace's metrics. Each icon is resized to the font's max advance width and centered as a best effort, so some glyphs may still render oddly in certain environments.
What are the Frozen builds for?They're TTFs with all of Monaspace's typographical features (stylistic sets) enabled by default, meant for environments where you can't configure font features yourself — the README specifically calls out XCode and IntelliJ IDEs.
What are similar projects?JetBrainsMono, maple-font, fonts, Hack, Iosevka, source-code-pro, Monocraft, source-han-sans
Which topics is it in?ofl, opentype, programming-font, variable-fonts, monospace, fonts, font, typography, vscode, homebrew, multilingual, shell
Creator
githubnext
Size
3.2 GB
Stars
19.7K
Updated
CommitMar 27Releasev1.400Mar 28
Age
3y
Commits · 90 Days