What's in a name? The reason for the name change is to comply with the SIL Open Font License (OFL), in particular the [Reserved Font Name mechanism][SIL-RFN]
Some fonts have parts of their name "reserved" per the [Reserved Font Name mechanism][SIL-RFN]:
> No Modified Version of the Font Software may use the Reserved Font
> Name(s) unless explicit written permission is granted by the corresponding
> Copyright Holder. This restriction only applies to the primary font name as
> presented to the users.
- The main goals seem to be to: `Avoid collisions`, `Protect authors`, `Minimize support`, and `Encourage derivatives`
See the [Reserved Font Name section][SIL-RFN] for additional information
## Which font?
### TL;DR
* Pick your font family and then select from the `'complete'` directory.
* If you are on Windows pick a font with the `'Windows Compatible'` suffix.
* This includes specific tweaks to ensure the font works on Windows, in particular monospace identification and font name length limitations
* If you are limited to monospaced fonts (because of your terminal, etc) then pick a font with the `'Mono'` suffix.
* This denotes that the Nerd Font glyphs will be monospaced not necessarily that the entire font will be monospaced
### Ligatures
By the *Nerd Font* policy, the variant with the `'Mono'` suffix is not supposed to have any ligatures.
Use the non-*Mono* variants to have ligatures.
### Explanation
Once you narrow down your font choice of family (`Droid Sans`, `Inconsolata`, etc) and style (`bold`, `italic`, etc) you have 2 main choices:
#### `Option 1: Download already patched font`
* download an already patched font from the `complete` folder
* This is most likely the one you want. It includes **all** of the glyphs from all of the glyph sets. Only caution here is that some fonts have glyphs in the _same_ code point so to include everything some had to be moved to alternate code points.
#### `Option 2: Patch your own font`
* patch your own variations with the various options provided by the font patcher (see each font's readme for full list of combinations available)
* This is the option you want if the font you use is _not_ already included or you want maximum control of what's included
* This contains a list of _all permutations_ of the various glyphs. E.g. You want the font with only [Octicons][octicons] or you want the font with just [Font Awesome][font-awesome] and [Devicons][vorillaz-devicons]. The goal is to provide every combination possible in this folder.
For more information see: [The FAQ](https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/wiki/FAQ-and-Troubleshooting#which-font)
> The combinations and total number of combinations are provided here for reference if you want to create your own variation of a patched Nerd Font.
### Why aren't all variations included ?
Combinations are no longer included by default because of the large inflation in size it caused the Repository _and_ the amount of time it takes to rebuild all of the combinations. This issue would exponentially get worse as the numbers of Fonts and Glyph Sets provided increase.
