Mateus R. Costa wrote:
> - Fira Mono (developed up to a certain point by Mozilla and then
> further by Carrois)
[...]
> - Fira Code (Fira Mono extended with programming ligatures)
[...]
> Fira Sans and Fira Mono are currently retired and I was in the process
> of sending a review to get them back in the repos.
> However I now question if it's a worth cause.
> 
> Think about it like this, if Fira Code and FiraGo are respectively
> supersets os Fira Mono and Fira Sans, maybe we should just reflect
> that in the packaging?
> We could ship a fontconfig that make the system behaves as the are
> equivalent and change the specs so the superset font provides the
> older one!

I've been using Fira Mono. Some years ago I compared all the packaged
monospace fonts I could find, and found that Fira Mono was the best at
distinguishing between I, l, 1, |, O, 0, Ø, ∅ and others. I'm not a fan
of the lorgnette-like g, but it's certainly not ambiguous so it's not a
big problem.

Having played around a bit with Fira Code, I find it unsuitable as a
general-purpose replacement for Fira Mono. The Ø-like zero is a big
drawback to me, and even more so to Danes and Norwegians I expect. The
dotted zero is an option that's available only in certain programs that
provide that feature.

I'm not sure what to think about the programming ligatures. Is it
really a good idea to display source code as other characters than it
actually is? Maybe I could get used to it, but it would require an
editor where the selection of ligatures can be configured separately
for each programming language. Some ligatures designed for one language
are totally wrong for another language.

When I tried Fira Code in a terminal window, the programming ligatures
took effect there too. That's definitely unwanted. The terminal emulator
doesn't know which language some program outputs, and has no option for
turning off the ligatures.

My conclusion is that Fira Code is only for use in certain advanced code
editors, not for monospace text in general. Using it to provide Fira
Mono is acceptable only if it's done in such a way that the ligatures
are disabled and the zero is restored simply by selecting "Fira Mono"
in a drop-down menu. Is that possible to do in a fontconfig?

If you decide to bring back Fira Mono, I'll use it. Otherwise I'll make
do with another general-purpose monospace font. For example Liberation
Mono is also pretty good at disambiguation.

Björn Persson

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