I disagree that ligatures are gimmicky in a general sense, but they definitely don't seem necessary for a terminal window. And doubly so if they impact performance.

Ligatures are great in a terminal with the right font. For example Fira Code does some nice things with ligatures for not-equal, 0x, rockets, etc.

This is a Mac program. One of the reasons why the Mac has historically been far ahead of other platforms is because its display could leverage centuries of advances in typography, and not be confined to the a 1970s character cell display designed by illiterates. Ligatures are extremely important for the platform and for the audience.

We're talking about ligatures in console based programming editors.

Not about setting ligatures for print.

So the whole argument is kind of moot. Having ligatures in console vi is not what made the Mac "historically be far ahead of other platform". In fact for the first 15 years of its life the Mac didn't even have a console.

Even in the desktop GUI program world, where ligatures in programming IDEs and editors are a possibility, they're still an extremely fringe endeavor.

This is true, but terminals tend to be used with monospace fonts that aren't very typographically complex.

That said there may? be languages other than English where ligatures are more than decorative, and would be more useful to have in a terminal.

I'm saying, maybe the terminals of today need to be more typographically aware, now that the computers of today can more than support it.

On the list that terminals need to do, being more typographically aware is on the very bottom on my list of priorities.

They could start by not mimicking 50+ year old hardware terminals down to arcane (and performance killing) details, supporting better and more powerful autocomplete and similar interactions, inline images, full colors, and so on...

It’s important to some people but probably not a majority. Ligatures are a best effort kind of thing. Where trade offs must be made, such as drawing performance, I choose to let the user make that choice.

And it sounds like they wouldn't, and that their priorities are different than yours.

I believe in an external world, where not everything is a matter of personal "priority", but certain things are objectively more significant than others.

And I might be wrong, but in that world, ligatures and transparent terminals are not really as important as rendering speed, latency, and/or less CPU load for a terminal emulator.

In fact, even where available, ligatures are a fringe option, adopted by very few people.

(I'm always talking about programming editors. Though even in print, their main domain, they're hardly mainstream these days).

I'm never bothered by iTerm2 being too slow or using too much CPU. Using transparency for my tmux profile makes it easier to tell whether the tab I've switched to is a local or remote session. Seeing coding ligatures makes me happy.

Why is the thing I don't notice objectively more important than my convenience and happiness?