When comparing Apple Monaco vs Hasklig, the Slant community recommends Apple Monaco for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Apple Monaco is ranked 12th while Hasklig is ranked 28th. The most important reason people chose Apple Monaco is:
Monaco's rendering is similar to that of Consolas but slightly more playful. Each character seems to be a tiny bit larger when compared to Consolas, yet code takes up the same amount of space.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Easy on user's eyes
Monaco's rendering is similar to that of Consolas but slightly more playful. Each character seems to be a tiny bit larger when compared to Consolas, yet code takes up the same amount of space.
Pro Good differentiation between clashing characters
The curly braces are easily distinguishable from parentheses, "0" is distinguishable from "O", and "1" is distinguishable from "l", to name but a few.
Pro Beautiful braces, perfect parens
Parentheses are half-circles. Square brackets, half-squares. Curly braces, unmistakable. Geometric, classy, fun, and most importantly clear.
Other fonts' bracket delimiters might start to look lifeless and wilted.
Especially well-suited to those who color their brackets as the colors show even against light backgrounds.
Pro Excellent legibility at non-antialiased small sizes
This font shines for legibility at non-antialiased small sizes. It was originally designed as a 9 pt bitmap font. This is excellent for when maximizing on-screen code is a priority.
Pro Small file size
Even if you are struggling with memory, this font is no concern. Its ttf file is just about 50 kb.
Pro Great for Haskell
Pro Has a heavier appearance than Fira Code or Monoid
Pro Completely free and open source
Freely available via GitHub, therefore can be modified and improved by anyone.
Pro Has many variants such as Italic, Bold Italic, Light, Semibold, etc., etc
Cons
Con Only comes with Mac OS X
While it generally only came with OS X, you can try here for installing on other platforms.
Con Ability to select different anti-aliasing grades was dropped
Before OS X Snow Leopard, it was possible to apply varying degrees of anti-aliasing to the font. At present, the previously "medium" anti-aliasing option is the only choice.
Con Lacks !=
Some coding fonts with ligatures, like Fira Code, turn != into ≠, but Hasklig does not. The reason for this is that Hasklig was designed for Haskell code, and so turns /= into ≠ instead.
Con Some Ligatures like -<< don't look that good.
Con Has a heavier appearance than Fira Code or Monoid
Con No support for many editors, including emacs
Unfortunately, not supporting emacs is the number one reason I don't use this font all the time.
Con Very cute but not WYSIWYG
You want to see exactly what you've typed, not have your brain have to do a little dance every time you see one of these artifacts.