Lowercase letter L looks too similar to number 1

[kevinschaich]

Font Name (Geist Sans/Geist Mono):

• Geist Sans
• Geist Mono

Geist Mono:

Another code font e.g. Hack

I think it's distracting – the whole purpose of a mono font is to remove ambiguity between characters.

[luciascarlet]

ss03 makes the "l" design look similar to the one in Hack. I much prefer that and I always enable that when using Geist in editors. Kind of wish it was the default, but I also think this is very much a stylistic preference.

[kevinschaich]

Sorry @luciascarlet what's ss03 you're referring to?

[luciascarlet]

Stylistic set 3. A lot of fonts include stylistic sets that can be activated via OpenType features. This is what it looks like:

Edit: Huh, not sure what's up with the rendering here; this may itself be worth investigating. I used Geist Mono Variable at 500 weight, with AA set to "antialiased" in VS Code, so no stem darkening on macOS. Appears to happen on the bolder weight too.

[kevinschaich]

Thanks @luciascarlet. Are there docs on how one would go about using it in HTML/React etc.? Or could you provide a quick ex?

[cmattinson]

@kevinschaich Enabling the OpenType features depends on your environment, most will allow changing the stylistic sets.

With VS Code you can enable them with theeditor.fontLigatures setting:

WezTerm with harfbuzz_features:

CSS with font-feature-settings

font-feature-settings: "ss01" 1, "ss03" 1, "ss04" 1;

There are 9 stylistic sets for alternate glyphs but I can't find the official documentation for them, I have to open the font with Font Gauntlet to see them.