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Add to SafariWhen comparing Hack vs MonoLisa, the Slant community recommends Hack for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Hack is ranked 7th while MonoLisa is ranked 54th.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Very readable
Pro Libre webfonts are available in svg, eot, ttf, woff, and woff2 formats
Hack is free for unlimited commercial and non-commercial use. The webfonts are hinted (TrueType instruction set) to optimize display on the screen and are built into all commonly used web font formats with each new release. They include the complete release character set and smaller (filesize) basic Latin subset releases. They are available in the build directory of the repository.
Pro Fixes many readability issues in Vera/DejaVu
The tilde symbol ('~'), comma (',') and semicolon (';') glyphs have been modified to be more readable at small sizes and/or on non-HD displays. In addition, the underscore symbol ('_') has been slightly lifted for alignment with surrounding characters.
Pro Avaliable in many GNU/Linux distro package manager
Including Debian/Ubuntu (fonts-hack), Fedora (font-hack-ttf), OpenSUSE (hack-fonts), Arch (ttf-hack) and probably many more. Much nicer than having to manually install/update
Pro Free/Open license
Pro Renders accurately on Windows on all font sizes
Pro Based on the tried and tested Bitstream Vera Sans Mono
The fonts are in the Vera Sans Mono lineage with a significant expansion of the character set (which includes Cyrillic and modern Greek character sets), new glyph shapes and modifications of the original glyph shapes, as well as improvements in metrics and hinting/TT instructions to make it more legible at small text sizes used for source code.
The changelog is available here.
Pro Powerline glyph patch is included
The regular set is patched with Powerline glyphs by default. There is no need to patch the font to use it in Powerline environments.
Pro Source code is released in UFO format
UFO source format is widely supported by all modern font editors if you would like to modify the typeface.
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 No ligatures in the default font
Although patched versions with ligatures do exist - see here.
Con Sometimes difficult to distinguish lowercase "i" (eye) and lowercase "l" (ell)
When using a higher resolution monitor and a smaller font size, the lowercase "i" (eye) and lowercase "l" (ell) are very difficult to distinguish. The space between the dot and the remainder of the letter seems to somehow disappear, thereby making it look like a solid line, similar to the lowercase "l" (ell).
Con Too similar to DejaVu
See this gif comparison between the two fonts.
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.
