What is font ligature stylistic sets? - visual-studio-code

I was trying to setup Fira Code font on vscode, which supports ligatures.
I came to this page, which states,
Stylistic sets Since version 1.40, you can define stylistic sets in
settings.json:
"editor.fontLigatures": "'calt', 'ss01', 'ss02', 'ss03', 'ss04',
'ss05', 'ss06', 'zero', 'onum'"
I tired "editor.fontLigatures": true and ligature works.
But I wonder now, what difference stylistic sets make?

Related

Configuring the font-style of VS Code's inlay-hints

How can I change the font's style for VS Code's "Inlay Hints" feature?
I attempted to search for an answer, but could only find how to change the color, not the style.
Here's an example:
I would like the word target in the image below to render italic.
I tried the following, however, it did not work...
{
scope: "inlayHint",
settings: {
fontStyle: "italic",
},
},
I also tried adding editor.inlayHint to the scope, but the attempt was without success.
Setting the Font-style to italic isn't Possible.
Not all is lost though, there's a workaround that actually works pretty well.
As I stated above, setting the font-style to italic is not possible. There is, however, a workaround, and it works pretty darn well. Before I explain the workaround, I think its important to note that the first solution I tried to use, was to set the font to an italic variant, unfortunately setting "editor.inlayHints.fontFamily" to an italic variant of a font was something that VS Code didn't seem to allow. I have seen this in many other situations. The idea is, since you can't do this "fontStyle": "italic", you just change the font to an italic version.
For example:
If I use Cascadia Code as my font, then — in theory — I can just us the following configuration:
// #file "settings.json"
{
"editor.inlayHints.fontFamily": "'Cascadia Code Italic'"
}
...however, it unfortunately doesn't work that way — or at-least not in this situation. Not only do italic varients not work, but neither do bold variants and/or expanded variants (i.e. 'Inconsolata SemiExpanded', 'Inconsolata Bold', etc...).
While moving forward, I will state the obvious:
There is no "editor.inlayHints.fontStyle" setting.
So what do we do?
Well we can set the font-family using "editor.inlayHints.fontFamily".
Its a bit suprising that we can set the font, but not the font's style. I am not sure why they designed it this way, but it's obvious that they built the feature with specific constraints for reasons that are beyond me (reading the feature's development feed on GitHub would probably help anyone who wanted to know more about why the feature works how it does). Nevertheless, we have a highly customizable setting, that actually gives us far more control than the setting that we established, does not exist, editor.inlayHints.font.
What I do, personally, which has a cool tricked-out look, is I find a
non-monospaced hand-written style of font — usually from Google Fonts — and I assign that to the font-family. It took me a while to find some fonts that work. Anyone who has ever played with fonts, trying to find which font works best for them to write code with, will know: Picking fonts that are used anywhere inside the editor (or inside your code) is going to require great scrutiny, and the longer you code, the more set in your ways you get, so this can actually be a time consuming setting to configure. It took me an hour to settle on a font, and I settled on using the "Sriracha" font-family. Siracha is oblique in appearance (looks italic), its readable in the editor, it renders well in the editor (which not all fonts are going to do), and its slightly bolder than the standard weight of the font I use wich is Cascadia Code.
My Configuration results in the following appearance:
When changing the font family, there are a couple other settings that help to configure this feature.
So, in other words, just do the following:
Download the italic &/or bold style font you wont from Google Fonts, Font Squirrel, or some other font source you perfer.
Set the font family using "editor.inlayHints.fontFamily".
Critique the fonts configuration using the other settings available below.
// #file "settings.json"
{
// Font Family
"editor.inlayHints.fontFamily": "/*NAME OF FONT FAMILY*/",
// Font Size
"editor.inlayHints.fontSize": 14, // <-- Set the font-size you want
// Theme Colors Override
"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
// Overrides Theme Default Colors for InlayHints feature
"editorInlayHint.background": "#00001CCC",
"editorInlayHint.foreground": "#99FFBBCC",
// Overrides Theme Parameter hints fg for InlayHints feature
"editorInlayHint.parameterBackground": "#00001CCC",
"editorInlayHint.parameterForeground": "#99FFBBCC",
// Overrides Theme Type hints fg for InlayHints feature
"editorInlayHint.typeBackground": "#08000088",
"editorInlayHint.typeForeground": "#DDEEFF88"
},
}
Really its quite simple.
By being able to set the inlayHints font family to anything we want, we can achieve any sort of font style we want.
In settings.json you need a line like
"editor.inlayHints.fontFamily": "'Myfontitalic'",
Now, it seems vscode has some trouble reading a font name with non alphanumeric characters, if for instance the italic version is "Myfont-Italic" or "Myfont Italic".
A solution is to copy and rename the font to a new name, like "Myfontitalic", without spaces or other characters.
What I did was for Ubuntu but the same idea should work on any Linux, and probably Windows, using other tools (fontforge?)
apt install fonttools font-manager to get ttx a utility to change font info (font-manager is also useful)
use a search, font-manager, font-viewer, ... to find the location of the font (usually /usr/share/fonts/... or ~/.local/share/fonts)
copy a fresh version somewhere (home), cp ~/.local/share/fonts/Myfont-Italic.otf ~/temp.otf and cd to go home
translate to an XML copy ttx temp.otf as temp.ttx
edit temp.ttx (vi, ...), and change all "Myfont-Italic", "Myfont Italic" ... (relevant names) to a unique "Myfontitalic" name, save.
translate back to otf (...) with ttx temp.ttx (creates Myfontitalic.otf if it was an otf file)
To install the new font (locally), either double-click on it in the file explorer ( ~/Myfontitalic.otf ) or use a tool. Restart font-manager, the new font should be visible.
Restart vscode and add the line above in settings.json.
on a Mac find the font variant name like this:
Open "Font Book" App
Expand the desired font and select a variant.
Click the (i) icon on the Font Book toolbar.
Use the PostScript Name name in VS Code - for example "editor.inlayHints.fontFamily": "DankMono-Italic"
No one tells you where to edit this and that makes it a pain in the butt.
File>Preferences>Settings, search for color customizations, click "Edit in settings.json"
{
"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
"editorInlayHint.background": "#00000000",
"editorInlayHint.foreground": "#666666FF",
},
}

How to find unicode characters that are not utf8 in VS Code?

I have unicode characters that I can't see, that are not utf8, I need to spot them.
I used the extension Highlight Bad Chars (Kevin Wenger) but it's not sufficient, in particular, I don't know which are these characters and I don't want to have to define them in advance.
How can I do this with VScode ?
Find [^\x00-\x7f] and Check use regular expressions.
Taken from Kon Blog
You can try the Gremlins extension which I found better than Highlight Bad Chars (Kevin Wenger) (at least, Gremlins worked out of the box; I couldn't get Highlight Bad Chars to highlight anything).
Also:
Gremlins Last updated: 11/5/2020
Highlight Bad Chars Last updated: 6/30/2018
In Stable Build v1.63 there is a new method for highlighting various unicode characters that might otherwise be difficult to spot in your code. These are the new settings:
You can use these colorCustomizations to change the default orange borders:
{
"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
"editorUnicodeHighlight.border": "#00ff37",
"editorUnicodeHighlight.background": "#f00", // will be in vscode v1.66
// "minimap.unicodeHighlight": "#ff0000", // removed in v1.64
// "editorOverviewRuler.unicodeForeground": "#ff0000" // removed in v1.64
}
Apparently, indicators for these unicode warnings will not be shown in the minimap or overview ruler as of v1.64, see Consider removing the unicode highlight scroll bar decoration
Here is how a unicode zero-width space appears with these settings:
The zero-width character is an invisible unicode character controlled by the Unicode Highlight: Invisible Characters setting above.
From v1.63 release notes: unicode highlighting
Read this article or this article for how invisible or confusable
Unicode characters can be used in Unicode spoofing attacks.
Note that this feature does not detect all possible Unicode spoofing
attacks, as this depends on your font and locale settings. Also, the
detection of ambiguous characters is done heuristically. To be on the
safe side, the restricted mode of the workspace trust should be used
to review source code, as all non-ASCII characters are highlighted in
untrusted workspaces.
The settings editor.unicodeHighlight.invisibleCharacters,
editor.unicodeHighlight.ambiguousCharacters or
editor.unicodeHighlight.nonBasicASCII can be set to false to disable
the corresponding feature.
Individual characters can be excluded from being highlighted and
characters in comments or text and markdown documents are not
highlighted by default.

How to use SF Mono in VS Code?

I have encountered some issues for setting up SF Mono font in VS Code.
Method 1
Add the following configuration in settings.json
"editor.fontFamily": "SF Mono"
The font seems to be bold, and changing "editor.fontWeight" to 100 doesn't help.
Method 2
"editor.fontFamily": "SFMono-Regular"
The texts have regular font weights now, but the comment is still bold.
Method 3
Try to configure the comment text separately.
"editor.fontFamily": "SFMono-Regular",
"editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
"textMateRules": [
{
"scope": "comment",
"settings": {
"fontStyle": "normal"
}
}
]
}
It seems configuring comment texts to normal gives them regular font weight.
My question is how to have regular SF Mono weights while having italic comments?
To use SF Mono in VS Code:
Remove your local version of SF Mono if it appears in Font Book.
Download the most recent version of SF Mono from Apple here: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/
In VS Code's settings set SF Mono as your preferred font. My config is SF Mono, Menlo, Monaco, 'Courier New', monospace
Restart VS Code
SF Mono should display properly, with the correct weight italics.

How to set a monopaced font in code-blocks?

My standard font is a proportional one. When I edit markdown files I would like to have all sections that are indented by 4 or more spaces be shown in a monospaced font.
I do not use any special markdown mode. Therefore I would be ok if I had to to switch that behavior manually on for the current buffer. Although, my own mode for *.md-files would be need of course, but I have no idea how to do that (and is beyond the scope if this question).
The modes that are active for me are:
Enabled minor modes: Abbrev Auto-Composition
Auto-Compression Auto-Encryption Blink-Cursor
Column-Highlight Column-Number Desktop-Save File-Name-Shadow
Flyspell Font-Lock Global-Font-Lock Icomplete Line-Number
Menu-Bar Mouse-Wheel Shell-Dirtrack Show-Paren
Tooltip Transient-Mark
Yes, you do need a mode that highlights markdown code. (Try M-x package-install RET markdown-mode+ RET) If you have font-locking enabled (I suspect you have), the mode that you end up probably gives syntax highlighting for markdown.
Now, syntax highlighting is just alterations to font and color used. Once you have it on, you can customize the font face used for code by navigating over a code block and issuing M-x customize-face. My markdown mode has code blocks under markdown-pre-face; the face under cursor will be selected by default for you.
I prepared some screenshots to show the workflow. Determining what emacs allows for font family or foundry is bit of a dark magic, and I leave it to google to find out more about it. On linux systems there used to be an ugly little helper called xfontsel where you can preview different font families and foundries.
You can experiment without saving anything first by applying the changes without saving; when things look fine, you can "apply and save" in the customize mode.
I'm going to partially disagree with the argument that you can do what you are after. You can only partially do what you are after and it is a bit of a hack.
Basically, you can set different fonts for different faces. So, provided the text you want to display in a fixed width font has a different face definition, then you can change the font from a proportional font to a fixed width font. At least, that is the theory.
Unfortunately, the results tend to be less than you would hope.
The problem is that most modes do not define faces for all possible characters. Faces tend to only be used to make something stand out and that tends to mean something which is special in the mode - a heading, a bit of syntax etc.
The problem will be witht he 'default face - the face used when no other face is specified. The default face is not mode specific. If you set default face to a monospace font, that font will be used in all modes, not just in 'plain' characters within markdown mode. If any of your fonts in markdown mode are proportional, you will find that alignment in indentation will not look consistent. Depending on how you structure your buffer contents, this may or may not be an issue.
Personally, I gave up on using a proportioanl font as the default font under emacs a long time ago and have settled instead on using a fixed width font as the default and then defining proportional fonts for some speial purposes, such as org-mode headers.
some things you could try which might work, would be
File local variables for setting fonts just in markdown filtes. I've not tried this, but you may be able to use file local variables. You would probably want to create a markdown template which sets this up in new markdown filtes.
Make the face variables buffer local. You might be able to define a markdown-mode hook function which makes the face variables buffer local and sets them to a fixed width font.
Face definitions can use inheritance, so theoretically, if all the faces used inherit from default face and you do a file local variable or buffer local variable to set the default face, then all other faces should inherit that definition, so you shouldn't have to do it for every font in the buffer.

How to change default face for embolden text in Emacs?

I do love thin fonts, so I have following customisation in my .emacs:
(set-frame-font "NK57 Monospace-14:weight=light" t)
This works as expected, however this does not tells Emacs that it should render embolden text with lighter weight too, e.g. to use medium instead of regular weight, so there is dramatically difference in weights, see picture below.
How can I tweak this?
Well, it is possible to customise default bold face using customize-face command as was mentioned by lawlist (i.e. Easy Customization).
However, this is not enough in most cases, because of some packages or themes could introduce another customisations, which overrides default one (e.g. font-lock-function-name-face, font-lock-keyword-face) and could be found in face customisation menu too.