Request for addition of patched Nerd Fonts [iOS]

[AnirvanB]

First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude for creating this awesome iOS terminal emulator app. I am a dedicated user and have been enjoying its functionality for a while now. I have a suggestion that I believe would greatly enhance the overall experience of using your app.

I recommend adding patched Nerd Fonts into the iOS app. These fonts offer improved readability, cater to developer preferences, and elevate the terminal prompt's aesthetics. By incorporating this feature, you would delight existing users, might even attract new ones.

As a token of appreciation, I'd be more than happy to buy you a coffee as a thank you for considering this suggestion.

[saagarjha]

Hi! Thank you for the kind words. Can you provide more detail as to why the existing font capabilities (like, our picker to let you select the one you want) fall short here? If you have the font installed iSH can definitely use it, and you can even script this setup process if you so desire. It is my understanding that the fonts you’re talking about can be customized for individual usecases, so this seems like a good fit for our existing font infrastructure?

[AnirvanB]

Thanks for getting back! The existing font picker only offers two options for me, viz. Menlo and Courier New, but these options fall short in terms of the extensive variety and customization potential offered by patched Nerd Fonts. Personally, I'm not well-versed in the process of adding fonts to iOS. Upon your mention of font installation, I conducted some preliminary research and discovered that it typically involves the use of third-party apps, which is not an ideal solution for me. I was hoping for a more seamless and integrated approach within the app itself. I even tried installing fonts into the terminal emulator filesystem under .fonts directory in /root path, but it still didn't expose them to the file picker. If there's a way to simplify the font installation process (by making it out-of-the-box) or provide guidance on scripting it, it would greatly enhance the user experience for users like me.

Also for reference, this is what the terminal font would look like post installation - https://github.com/ish-app/ish/issues/1485#issuecomment-914282582 or https://github.com/ish-app/ish/pull/1897#issuecomment-1237974899

Not sure if this info. is needed, but I'm on iOS 16.5 with iSH 1.3.2 (Build 494) and using ZSH shell.

[saagarjha]

The process of installing a font on iOS is unfortunately a bit convoluted, but we don't really have plans at the moment to bundle font management into the app itself. This task is better served by dedicated software, and hopefully the OS itself at some point (…I'm sure Apple would appreciate this feedback). While we cannot decide for you which choice to go with, we personally use Fontcase for this when testing, as it was designed for mostly this purpose.

Once you've installed a font on your system, you can script its use by writing to /proc/ish/defaults/font_family.

[AnirvanB]

Thanks a lot for the detailed instructions on installing and applying the font. It was really helpful!

You know, from my past experiences, it's pretty clear that Apple isn't too concerned about what end-users want. But I've got to say, I have a lot more faith in you to actually get this done. However, since you feel it is not a priority for you now we can consider this issue to be resolved. Look forward to seeing some great improvements in the future!

[enderprism]

hi! Fontcase isn’t really an option for me, as my iPad has an MDM which prevents it from installing configuration profiles, which is how Fontcase install fonts. could there be an alternative way, that would for example involve creating a fonts folder which would import and render fonts at runtime?

[enderprism]

this is the behavior of Termux, where you can add a fonts.ttf in your ~/.termux/ folder iirc and gdocs can use non-system fonts so it should be possible right? i don’t have any experience in making iOS apps so i don’t know.