Revisiting Programming Fonts

Does anyone else have problems with ClearType on rotated displays? At 90 degrees the RGB subpixels are arranged vertically and no setting looks good (IMHO).

Try Microsoft’s ClearType Tuning PowerToy to tweak the ClearType settings; if I remember correctly you can set the subpixels vertically or horizontally with this tool.

I’ve tried it before and checked it again, not the wizard nor the ‘advanced’ tab have a solution.

GAH!!! Comic Sans!! IT BURNS MY EYES.

http://bancomicsans.com/home.html

I use Consolas. Best. Coding. Font. Ever.

+1 using proportional fonts for coding. Can be a little harder to select text, but the improved readability more than makes up for it. As for vertical alignment: I don’t get fancy with it; proportional fonts handle my needs just fine. On Windows, I use Tahoma.

For another great fixed-width font, check out Anonymous by Mark Simonson. TrueType, free. Lovely, I think.
http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymous.html

Does anyone else have problems with ClearType on rotated displays? At 90 degrees the RGB subpixels are arranged vertically and no setting looks good (IMHO).

Try Microsoft’s ClearType Tuning PowerToy to tweak the ClearType settings; if I remember correctly you can set the subpixels vertically or horizontally with this tool.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypePowerToy.mspx

Well, it’s no wonder Mac users like Monaco more than Windows users, it does look significantly better when rendered on a Mac than on Windows. When talking about anti-aliased fonts in larger sizes though, sure there are better alternatives. Jacob Rus said it, Monaco really dows look its best bitmapped and in 9 or 10pt (and 9pt Monaco was actually the OS font for icon labels in the Finder, later on upped to 10pt). But I think you’d be hardpressed to find a font that does a better job than Monaco of looking good (on the Mac at least) both as a small bitmap and as a scalable, anti-aliased programming font.

Take a look at this:

http://lemonodor.com/images/macsbug.gif

Bitmapped 9pt Monaco. Looks a lot like that ProFont some people rave about here, if you ask me.

For me personally though, I’ll stick with Courier. The serifs really do ease legibility, in my opinion - and it saves vertical space.

there is only one ultimate font, and it’s Fixedsys, and FixedsysTTF, there is no better monotype font out there, Consolas and Courier and all other is a crap together with totaly useless ClearType… nobel price for the one who invented fixedsys ;]

To me Consolas wins hands down.

I’ve been a fan of Anonymous for some time, but Consolas is pretty nice now.

Andrew, I think you’re failing to see the forest for the trees. There is a difference between “precision” and “accuracy”, and CRTs with electron guns and analog connections are subject to many factors that badly affect the accuracy of what’s being displayed, regardless of how precise the electron gun itself might be. An LCD, with a digital connection and discrete pixels, suffers from none of these sources of interference.

The capitalistic nature of our encomony though has prevented the making of decent screens

One might instead say that capitalism has GIVEN us the opportunity to make any screens at all. What superior display technologies have managed economies given to us?

Don’t forget to try the Bolds! Nothing beats Vera Sans Bold in my experience. White on black.

Inconsolata works great on Mac. I’m new to the Mac crowd, and coming from Windows, Monaco hurt my eyes. Thanks for the find!

Nothing has worked better than Dina for me… It is extremely well-balanced font.

(For some strange reason, any truetype font like Consolas that I install, does not work properly. It shows up quite blurry. The truetype fonts installed alongwith Windows (like Arial and Verdana) work absolutely fine)

Consolas RULE!

Inconsolata is in Debian apparently, so anyone running Debian that wants to try it, just install the “ttf-inconsolata” package. Probably in Ubuntu too.

Joe wrote:
" Try Microsoft’s ClearType Tuning PowerToy to tweak the ClearType settings; if I remember correctly you can set the subpixels vertically or horizontally with this tool.

I’ve tried it before and checked it again, not the wizard nor the ‘advanced’ tab have a solution."

Try this:
a href="http://www.ioisland.com/cleartweak/"http://www.ioisland.com/cleartweak//a

I believe that vertical sub pixels are supported on Vista but not on XP, but don’t have Vista to check this.

On Mac, I like Monaco size 9, but unless you are running at a low resolution, it’s too small, IMO. Sadly, I find the larger sizes simply unattractive, so Monaco is not really an option for me at 1600x1200 or 1440x900(what I’m normally running). However, X11’s -misc-fixed 18(misc/9x18.pcf.gz) is wonderful at those resolutions and appears to have support for many unicode characters. The only standard gripe that I have with it is the lack of a slash through the zero.

Another vote for IBM3270 at 12 points, coming from someone who spends 8 hours a day in front of a 32 inch LCD.

Darren Ogawa
Developer/Analyst
International Telegram Service

On OSX I use Monaco 12 but on Windows I have to use Monaco 8 to get good results.

There’s a Greek foundry called Backpacker that makes a nice font called BPMono. The curlies are a bit too similar to one another and the brackets are a bit too vertical. Otherwise perfect. Here: http://www.backpacker.gr/pages/fonts/fonts.asp

Dejavu / Bitstream Vera Sans Mono for me.