Best Unicode Fonts for Programer

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

This page shows the best fonts for programers.

What is the Criterions for Best Font?

What do i mean “best”? The font should be:

There are lots fonts designed for programers, but as soon as you started to use some math symbols or Unicode symbols, they don't work well.

Unicode Character Sample

Copy and Paste the following into your editor, see how your font do.

«»‹› “” ‘’ 〖〗【】「」『』〈〉《》〔〕 ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρςτυφχψω ¤$¢€₠£¥ ©®™ §¶†‡※ •◦‣✓ ☞ ●■◆★♠♣♥♦ ○□◇☆♤♧♡♢ ᴁᴂᴈ ♩♪♫♬♭♮♯ ¿¡ ¶§ª - ‐ ‑ ‒ – — ― … ° ⌈⌉ ⌊⌋ ∏∑∫∂√ ± ×÷⊕⊖⊗ ′″‴ ⁱ¹²³ ₀₁₂ π∞ ∀¬∧∨∃⊦ ∵∴ ∎ ∅∈∉⊂⊃⊆⊇⊄ ∪∩ ≠≤≥≮≯≈≡≔ ℕℤℚℝℂ ←→↑↓ ↔ ↖↗↙↘ ⇐⇒ ↞↠↟↡ ⇞⇟ ⌘⌥‸⇧⌤⌫⌦ ⎋⏏◀▶▲▼ ◁▷△▽ ⇄ ⇤⇥ ↹↵↩⏎ ⌨ ␣ ⎗⎘⎙⎚⌧ ⌚⌛⌶ ♿ ✂✄↶↷↺↻ ✉✍ ①②③ ✝✚✡☥⎈☭☪☯☮☺☹ ☠☢☣☤♲♳⌬☼☾ ♀♂

For more examples of Unicode characters, see:

Best Monospace Fonts for Unicode

Best monospace fonts for unicode are:

emacs JuliaMono 2021-08-31
JuliaMono 2021-08-31
font DejaVu Sans Mono Unicode 2014-10-05
DejaVu Sans Mono 2014-10-05
JuliaMono font 2021-08-31
JuliaMono font. Note vertical alignment of the characters.
JuliaMono font glyph count 2021-08-31
JuliaMono font glyph count 2021-08-31

Font for Emoji 😸 👍

see Download Free Unicode Fonts

Which Font Has All Unicode Chars?

No single font has ALL Unicode chars. At best, they contain all chars in the Basic Multilingual Plane, meaning, the most commonly used ~65 thousand chars. (That is, 16 bits).

Font Substitution Tech

{Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux} all have Font substitution technology. When a char in the current font doesn't have a glyph, the system search for the glyph in other available fonts. So, this way, each font can be specially designed for a particular language or purpose, while you can still display many Unicode symbols in the same page.

As of 2021, today's font contain lots unicode, and also font substitution tech is robust. You can use Microsoft Windows Consolas or MacOS Menlo to display text with lots math symbols and it usually looks fine. But if you really use a lot math symbols, and want all characters to be aligned, JuliaMono, DejaVu Sans, Iosevka are the solution.

StackOverflow answers: “How does a Unicode character get mapped to a glyph in a font?”: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3582944/how-does-a-unicode-character-get-mapped-to-a-glyph-in-a-font

Thanks to Pete Forman who suggested the font DejaVu. [Pete Forman websites https://payg-petef.rhcloud.com/home?i=1 http://petef.22web.org/]

Programer Inane Obsession with Font

Start at 10:14, why typography sucks. Xah Talk Show 2020-10-03 Dumang Dk6 Keyboard, Idiocy of Typography, emacs, python MapThread

Emacs and Unicode

File Encoding

Unicode Font Setup

Emacs Font Setup