When comparing Mononoki vs Apple San Francisco Mono, the Slant community recommends Mononoki for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Mononoki is ranked 29th while Apple San Francisco Mono is ranked 38th. The most important reason people chose Mononoki is:
Characters are well-differentiated and render clearly. Punctuation is large and easy to see. All characters are easily distinguishable from other similar-looking characters.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Very legible
Characters are well-differentiated and render clearly. Punctuation is large and easy to see. All characters are easily distinguishable from other similar-looking characters.
Pro Very smooth
This font is smooth and beautiful.
Pro Works on cheap displays
Specifically designed to work well on low resolution displays (in addition to high resolution displays).
Pro Nice italic characters
Pro Works at low pixel sizes
9px +!
Pro Clear and dis·tin·guish·a·ble
Code is very readable at both big and small sizes.
Pro Beautiful with high pixel density
Pro Best legible font
This font is legible in every condition.
Pro Visible punctuation
Punctuation is prominent and easily visible.
Pro Looks good on low and high PPI displays
SF Mono looks good on external monitors and Retina Displays. Large and small font sizes.
Cons
Con No ligatures
Con Parenthesis
Asymmetric and too bulbous.
Con Not found by default in any system
Con Apple is locking down this font
It's not open in any sense of the word. It even gives warnings if you try to rip it out of the Terminal.app or Xcode bundles. Obviously, Apple only wants it on their tools. This is such a shame. It should work in other editors, too. It's a beautiful font. Apple open sourced swift, why can't they be open with a monospace font?
Con No Ligature support
Does not support Ligatures so it doesn't play well with some terminal themes.
Con Lowercase l (ell) is similar to 1 (one)
Con Slightly difficult to use outside of Xcode, Terminal, or Console
The typeface isn't available in Font Book, etc. unless the user imports the files embedded in the apps above.