Firacode: Ligature Request: += and -=
clozed2u
All 18 comments
I’ve considered that very early on. Just don’t see any way how I can improve these with ligatures. Do you have something in mind?
tonsky
on 15 Apr 2016
PranayKarani
on 4 Jun 2016
I actively think these shouldn't be ligatures.
The ligatures are cool because they take multi-character strings that we think of as a single thing, and turn them into a single thing. As you say in this repo's readme, "sequences like ->... are single logical tokens."
But += is logically _two_ tokens: addition and assignment. That's how my brain thinks of it, and I don't want the ligature to tell me otherwise. In Java at least, it's even an important distinction in multithreading contexts: a ligature-ized += would imply an "increment by" operation, which feels atomic, but the code is actually saying "take the lhs, add to it the rhs, and then assign the value back to the lhs" -- which is very much not atomic.
yshavit
on 16 Jun 2016
But you could also interpret it as "add rhs to lhs variable" which is basically an atomic operation.
MadcapJake
on 16 Jun 2016
In Java at least, it's not at all atomic. Even if you have a volatile field, var += value is non-atomic and can miss updates.
yshavit
on 16 Jun 2016
yshavit has a point, but I also don't know what such a ligature would look like while still keeping it familiar.
I'm not sure if this is a font-rendering issue or something in Fira Code, but could the + and - be better aligned with the =?
Current:
Aligned:
Maybe this is just a tweak to the individual characters though.
engelfrost
on 17 Jun 2016
@engelfrost that’s an artefact of lowercase-aligned +. Will fix
tonsky
on 19 Jun 2016
Here's a proposition.
Top is current, bottom is proposed ligature. No connections, simply reduced kerning.
serebit
on 13 Jul 2016
I like the idea of a += ligature, and if that exists, then -= should probably exist for symmetry. But then should all the other assignment operations available in different languages also exist? In the C family there are often *= (multiply-assign), /= (divide-assign), possibly %= (modulo assign)...
JamesFaix
on 16 Jul 2016
*= could have a vertically-aligned ligature with reduced kerning. /= could just have a smaller /, with better vertical alignment. Modulo assign seems fine as is.
serebit
on 16 Jul 2016
*= could even use the actual multiplication sign, ×=.
aaaxx
on 17 Jul 2016
I think that's a bad idea because * doesn't always mean multiplication.
Plus it would be too different to discern what the underlying operator is.
On Jul 16, 2016 10:24 PM, "aaaxx" [email protected] wrote:
*= could even use the actual multiplication sign, ×=.
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MadcapJake
on 17 Jul 2016
@MadcapJake I see your point. I think += and -= are more valuable than *= and /=.
@aaaxx I think changing *= to look like x= would be too confusing. I've never used a programming environment where 'x' was used for multiplication, and even in math textbooks a dot is often used instead of 'x' for clarity with variables named 'x'.
JamesFaix
on 19 Jul 2016
I agree with improved vertical alignment and reduced kerning for +=, -=, *= and /=.
I too think *= should not be rendered as a ×= because it would only add confusion.
thany
on 11 Aug 2016
@yshavit — regarding the number of logical tokens: I see your point that += could be regarded as "addition and assignment" but one could also think of it as .push(), which is a single logical action.
chharvey
on 28 Dec 2017
If we're going to list all possible operator assignments, here's two more:
.=Used in php to concatenate and assign strings&=|=^=~=Used in several languages as binary or bitwise AND/OR/XOR/NOT and assign numbers<<=>>=Used in several languages as bitshift left/right and assign numbers:=Assignment operator in Pascal/Delphi
I'm not saying it's a brilliant idea to make ligatures for all of these. I'm just saying it's not necessarily a good idea to make ligatures (even if just for alignment & kerning distance) for some of them while leaving others out of the equation.
thany
on 2 Jan 2018
@thany Looks like all of those are supported, except &=.
j-f1
on 2 Jan 2018
Feels weird that +=, -= and *= aren't supported (which is how I got here). /= is supported so the "but it's 2 actions" reason isn't even being followed.
Even just making things align better would be nice.
robclancy
on 28 Aug 2018
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Most helpful comment
Here's a proposition.
Top is current, bottom is proposed ligature. No connections, simply reduced kerning.