Lilex is the modern programming font containing a set of ligatures for common programming multi-character combinations.

This is just a font rendering feature: underlying code remains ASCII-compatible. This makes it easier to read and understand the code. In some cases, the ligatures connect closely related characters (==, ---), while in others they optically align the glyphs (.., ??).

Compiled versions are available under releases. Bleeding edge builds can be downloaded in the build workflow artifacts.

Installation

1. Download font.
2. Unzip the archive and install the font:
   • Mac: Select Lilex-VF.ttf in the variable folder and double-click it. Click the Install Font button.
   • Windows: Select Lilex-VF.ttf in the variable folder, right-click it, then click Install from the menu.

Visual Studio Code

1. From the Code menu (File on Windows) go to Preferences → Settings, or use keyboard shortcut ⌘+, (Ctrl+, on Windows).
2. In the Editor: Font Family input box type Lilex.
3. To enable ligatures, go to Editor: Font Ligatures, click Edit in settings.json, and copy "editor.fontLigatures": true into file.

If you want to enable stylistic sets, list them instead of true. Like:

"editor.fontLigatures": "'calt', 'ss02', 'ss04'"

iTerm2

1. From the iTerm2 menu go to Settings. Under Profiles, find the Text tab.
2. If you have more than one profile, select the one you want to change. Or change the default one (with an asterisk).
3. Click on the font name under the 'Font' heading, find Lilex and select it.

Note I recommend using ExtraThick instead of Regular for iTerm2, so the letter thickness will roughly match VS Code.

Weight

There are 6 font weights available in Lilex, ranging from Thin to Bold. In addition, a variable font is available.

Character Set

The font has support for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek. It also includes ligatures and powerline symbols.

A full glyph table can be found on the preview page.

Features

The font has additional styles for some characters, so it can be configured to better fit your needs. Instructions on how to activate OpenType features in your IDE can be found on the internet, or build your own variation of the font with forced features

Some ligatures also have additional options. For example, certain arrows are initially switched off to avoid conflicts with logical operations.

Arrows

Lilex uses generated ligatures for arrows, so they can be infinite. Combine that to assemble your unique arrows.

There is also a full set of single-character arrows (↑, ↓, etc.) in the font.

Build

Setup

At the moment building is possible on Ubuntu and macOS. First, install the system dependencies.

macOS

brew install cairo freetype harfbuzz pkg-config

Ubuntu

sudo apt install python3-setuptools ttfautohint build-essential libffi-dev libgit2-dev

Common

Clone the repository and navigate to the project folder:

git clone https://github.com/mishamyrt/Lilex
cd Lilex

And then setup python virtual environment:

make configure

Compile

Now run the command to build Lilex.

make build

or

./scripts/lilex.py build

Forced feature activation

The builder gives you the ability to forcibly enable any font features. This works by moving their code to the calt. If the ligatures work, the selected features will also work.

To do this, build the binaries from the source file with the features:

./scripts/lilex.py --features 'ss01,zero' build

Credits

• Author: Mikhael Khrustik
• Based on: IBM Plex Mono
• Inspired by: Fira Code