Is ligating www to a zigzag-line a good idea?

[Spontifixus]

I find myself typing some URLs in config files or code constants, basically something like

String url = "http://www.example.com";

Same goes for things like variable names:

Url wwwUrl = new Url(...);

The www gets ligated to a zigzag-line here. I personally would prefer these three letters not to be concatenated but instead treated as three separate letters. Because as you stated in your readme.md:

For the human brain, sequences like ->, <= or := are single logical tokens, even if they take two or three characters on the screen

In my opinion www is no such token, but rather a concatenation of three letters, that can occur in comments, strings, variable names or wherever. This is basically the same as http, https, ftp, or mailto, which do not get ligated either.

What do you think?

[alexisvl]

The www token honestly looks bad. Out of all the ligatures in this font, most of which I like, www is the only one that I think sticks out like a gratuitous sore thumb. It feels like a slippery slope to having a ligature for everything in /usr/share/dict/words ;)

[krux02]

I think the fact that www is "a concatenation of three letters, that can occur in comments, strings, variable names or wherever" alone does not disqualify it for a ligature. just think of the very common ligatures fi ft etc in other normal fonts. But I do agree that the ligature chosen for www does not improve readability, and I heavily doubt that there might be a suitable ligature that would be suitable.

[FredrikAugust]

Completely agree, I don't think www should be made one symbol as it doesn't really increase the readability of your code.

[oderwat]

And www does not even really mean anything important. It is just the most common subdomain for no reason at all :) Please remove www ligature!

[cciotti]

It needs some refinement for sure. The x-height is too small for one and the spacing to the . could be closer. That said, I don't think it's a bad addition.

[kosiakk]

www is there for fun and lulz. Monoid has ligature for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ for exactly the same reason :-)

[FredrikAugust]

To me that doesn't seem logical. www is something you use quite often, and you want that to be easily readable. The ascii-art isn't something you type regularly in your code, and therefore it isn't a problem if that is ligated.

If you want a joke in your font please use a string people don't use on a regular basis.

[alexisvl]

Come on, that's just bad. :D

I mean, I know it's for code, not IRC, but... ewww

[monkpit]

@tonsky will this be addressed anytime soon?

[tonsky]

Not really — I like www. But if I do stylistic sets eventually, or online font builder, there’ll definitely be an option to turn it off.

[joffrey-bion]

This also surprised me as these are 3 separate letters and I don't see the rationale behind merging them.

[tonsky]

@joffrey-bion do you see a rationale in merging f and i in fi? It’s one of the most common ligature out there

[joffrey-bion]

@tonsky I don't see one that fits, and I also don't think the "fi" ligature has its place in this specific font. Ligatures are usually used in fonts when the handwritten version can be seen already (either by mistake or on purpose), which would justify both "www" and "fi". My point is, I don't think this kind of ligature has its place in fira code, because I believe this font is not about making stuff look like handwritten, but rather about "tokenizing" combinations of characters often seen in programming, like arrows and comparators, to smooth the reading flow.

[tonsky]

Well I like it. It’s also a distinguishing feature. If I ever build a builder, there’ll definitely be an option to turn this off

[joffrey-bion]

Fair enough, you're free to keep what you like, after all :) It didn't really bother me for the past year, and I really enjoy the rest of the font, so I can live with that.