When comparing Fira Mono vs MonoLisa, the Slant community recommends Fira Mono for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Fira Mono is ranked 51st while MonoLisa is ranked 54th. The most important reason people chose Fira Mono is:
Almost looks like Source Code pro and works great with Intelli J where Source Code Pro renders all junk on one of the primary IDE. Very good for people who read code through out the day.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Looks great and is easy on eyes
Almost looks like Source Code pro and works great with Intelli J where Source Code Pro renders all junk on one of the primary IDE.
Very good for people who read code through out the day.
Pro Extremely readable
You can look at the code for hours and hours. The height between lines and the spacing is perfect.
Pro Offers better performance in some Emacs builds
This font is used by some Emacs users on Mac OS X in order to get better performance.
Pro Customizable OpenType features downloads
The website offers customizable downloads for editors that don't support OpenType features natively.
Pro Script variant
It comes with script variant for italics.
Pro Ligatures
The typeface supports over 120 optionally enabled ligatures for common coding tasks.
Pro Italics
The typeface comes with an italic version.
Pro Space
Space used by the characters has been carefully balanced to keep them light to read.
Pro Reading flow
The characters have been designed to flow into each other so that the font feels easy to read.
Pro Distinction
Specific care has been put to make programming characters such as 1, i, and l or O or 0 easy to tell apart.
Pro Wider than usual
As it's wider, this means there's more space for designing characters like "m".
Cons
Con Large line height
Compared to other options, Fira has a high line height, which reduces the number of lines you can see on screen at one time.
Con Not free
This font requires a purchase in order to be used. The cheapest version ('Basic') is 60 dollars. There is a free trial, though.
Con Wider than usual
As it's wider, this means a short adjustment period may be required. If you have a limited amount of horizontal space, the wider glyphs may be problematic as well.