

Inconsolata - Cieplak
http://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html

======
SeoxyS
I discovered Inconsolata two years ago or so, and it's been my go-to
monospaced font ever since. I have it set to 11 points anti-aliased and it
just looks gorgeous!

For your viewing pleasure, here is what my typical development environment
looks like (anti-aliased retina 11pt Inconsolata):

[http://akhun.com/seo/skitch/Screen_Shot_2012-07-19_at_10.17....](http://akhun.com/seo/skitch/Screen_Shot_2012-07-19_at_10.17.48_AM-20120719-101815.png)

~~~
Munksgaard
What theme do you use, and do you have your .emacs up somewhere?

~~~
SeoxyS
I use vim :). I made my own color Terminal theme, which isn't up anywhere.

You can find my .vimrc and the rest of my configurations over here:
[https://github.com/kballenegger/dotfiles/blob/dotfiles/.vimr...](https://github.com/kballenegger/dotfiles/blob/dotfiles/.vimrc)

------
telemachos
I love Inconsolata, except for one small thing: the curly quotation marks.

If you have that same quibble, good news: Inconsolata-dz[1]. Inconsolata with
straight quotes.

[1]: [http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-
dou...](http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-double-
quotes-inconsola/)

~~~
anveo
There is also Inconsolata-g[1] which is an enhanced version of Inconsolata-dz.
I prefer the dotted zero among a few other changes.

[1]: <http://leonardo-m.livejournal.com/77079.html>

~~~
gorekee
I had problems with Inconsolata in PhpStorm 4. But this version works. Tanks a
lot.

------
Adrock
I included Inconsolata in my programmatic comparison of programming fonts:

[http://1overn.com/2011/01/31/iterating-on-font-pair-
comparis...](http://1overn.com/2011/01/31/iterating-on-font-pair-comparisons/)

Consolas vs. Inconsolata: [http://1overn.com/2011/01/31/iterating-on-font-
pair-comparis...](http://1overn.com/2011/01/31/iterating-on-font-pair-
comparisons/consolasinconsolata-2/)

Droid Sans Mono vs. Inconsolata: [http://1overn.com/2011/01/31/iterating-on-
font-pair-comparis...](http://1overn.com/2011/01/31/iterating-on-font-pair-
comparisons/droidsansmonoinconsolata-2/)

~~~
nnq
Cool, your Consolas vs Inconsolata overlay comparison made me understand why I
just love Consolas so much and have grown to hate any other fixed width font
(of course, getting the right antialiasing settings for it on Linux can be a
bitch sometimes)... I just like its oversized "[]", "@" and lower than
standard "_" and beautiful straight quotes.

~~~
msutherl
Consolas is wonderful and definitely better than Iconsolata. If you like
Inconsolata, I highly recommend trying to hunt down a copy of Consolas from
Windows (I did this on my Mac for awhile). These days, though, I use Meslo
because it allows me to get a bit more line height in a graceful way.

~~~
27182818284
Although it used to come with programs like VS, I now believe it is just out
there for anyone to take [http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=1787...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=17879)

------
raldi
How to change Chrome's default (crappy) monospace font:

1\. Go to chrome://settings/fonts

2\. Click the dropdown for "Fixed-width font"

------
marban
Not free but i've used Pragmata over the last years.
<http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragmatapro.htm>

------
Adrock
I love Inconsolata on the printed page and it's my go-to font for code
listings in LaTeX, but it wasn't really designed for display. On the screen, I
prefer something with nice bitmaps at smaller sizes, like Anonymous Pro.

~~~
calinet6
Yes, Anonymous Pro is the one and only for me. Beautiful at all sizes and
especially small points.

~~~
Adrock
If you like Anonymous Pro and are obsessive, I have a minor tweak that fixes
an issue with the bitmap version of "/":

[http://1overn.com/2011/02/02/tweaking-my-favorite-
programmin...](http://1overn.com/2011/02/02/tweaking-my-favorite-programming-
font-anonymous-pro/)

I named the modified version "Nameless Amateur," which was a big mistake as it
makes Googling for it a NSFW activity.

------
graue
If anyone uses Windows here, note that this font is going to look much worse
for you than it does on Mac or Linux. I use the Inconsolata-g variant[1] on
Xubuntu and love it, but to my chagrin, it looked wretched on the Windows
machine at work: jagged edges everywhere.

The Google Web Fonts version of the original Inconsolata — which has
apparently been "properly hinted for Windows"[2] — was a major improvement,
but still lacks the buttery smoothness the font has on Linux.

This discrepancy seems to be due to a Linux font setting that lets you choose
"slight", "medium" or "full" hinting, with slight being the default. If I
choose full, I get the more squared-off, digital-looking font appearance I
associate with Windows. I don't have a Mac, but based on screenshots in this
thread, the appearance is the same as Linux.

Anyway, good to see Inconsolata getting some attention. A very well-made font.

[1] <http://leonardo-m.livejournal.com/77079.html>

[2] [http://pgl.yoyo.org/bits/tech/inconsolata-cleartype-raph-
lev...](http://pgl.yoyo.org/bits/tech/inconsolata-cleartype-raph-leviens-
inconsolota-font-hinted-for-windows/51:2008-09-25/)

------
Paul_S
No truetype font will replace a pixel perfect bitmapped font. Not until we
have displays with ridiculous dpi. And until that happens you can't beat
terminus as it's perfect.

Yes, I know it's meant for print, but people here mention it in the context of
using it on the screen as well.

~~~
robin_reala
_Not until we have displays with ridiculous dpi._

3 years will see the majority of new computers on ‘retina’ displays.

~~~
LeonidasXIV
That means we get back to what we had in 2005 with the T42's 1600x1200 15"
screen?

~~~
drivebyacct2
That's not even close to the pixel density of the MBP Retina, or the new 1080p
11" IPS screens.

And given that I paid as much for my T61 a couple years ago as I could've paid
for a decent MBP and the screen made my eyes bleed, I'm willing to be the
1600x1200 display was not that great.

------
kevinSuttle
This is by far my favorite programming font. Has been since Office 2007. You
should also check out Inconsolata for Powerline, especially in Vim.

<https://github.com/skwp/dotfiles/tree/master/fonts>

------
thiderman
I have been using Inconsolata since about a year ago. I was an avid user of
tiny pixel fonts, but I felt an increasing amount of strain on my eyes. This
worried me since I'm only 23, so I went out to look for bigger fonts. Pixel
fonts look horrible in bigger sizes, and I was never a fan of anti-aliasing,
so it took me a while before I found something I liked. Inconsolata made me
switch, and I never looked back.

Screenshot for great justice! <http://shot.ninjaloot.se/20120719.201001.png>

~~~
3am_hackernews
What OS, window manager, term and theme are you using? Looks really nice and
very close to what I would want.

~~~
thiderman
Thank you! I am using Arch Linux with i3 (default config except for some
keybindings) and running rxvt-unicode with tmux sessions. The top bar is a
dzen2 dock with a custom script feeding it information. There is no real theme
involved, but all the settings on display can be found at my GitHub account.

<https://www.archlinux.org>

<http://www.i3wm.org>

<http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html>

<http://tmux.sourceforge.net/>

<https://github.com/robm/dzen>

<https://github.com/daethorian/config>

------
lightyrs
I love Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. Looks great at large sizes too!

~~~
BerislavLopac
I've just checked my settings, tested with Inconsolata, Consolas and Andale
Pro, and returned to Vera Sans Mono. ;-)

~~~
lightyrs
I always end up doing this whenever a programming font article comes up on HN.

------
splattne
Is it me or does t not match the style of the other letters?

~~~
andrewcooke
i think it's a feature that is supposed to add character. and perhaps it looks
better in use (that image is pretty poorly anti-aliased, i think).

------
jamesaguilar
I tried this and loved it, but it lacks one of the two prime weights (bold,
ital), can't remember which. That hurts it because a lot of code editing for
me takes place in an environment where all three weights are used, and it
kills the monospaced-ness.

------
wreckimnaked
Ricty(<http://save.sys.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yusa/fonts/ricty.html>) user here, I
love how it it is just enough "serified" for better readability

------
jwr
Inconsolata has been my font of choice for many years now whenever I have to
use antialiased fonts or when I want a large font. It beats all others for
readability.

For most of my programming/terminal work, however, I use Proggy Clean, non-
antialiased. The amount of context you can put on the screen this way is
amazing. Also, once you use a well-designed non-antialiased font for a while,
you will have a hard time going back to the fuzzy outlines of vector fonts. I
think a retina-quality display will obviate the need for fonts like Proggy
Clean, though.

------
greyfade
I like this font, but its hinting on Linux sometimes makes it unusable. I keep
jumping between Inconsolata-g, Clean, Consolas, Anka/Coder, and Andale Mono,
because each one of them has something that just bugs the hell out of me.

I'm still looking for a font that has clean hinting at 8pt on Linux, that
doesn't have absolutely atrocious features, and that has a reasonable number
of symbols on the mathematical and non-Latin Unicode planes. Fontconfig with
Infinality patches helps, but not enough.

------
q_revert
having seen a few blogs about this in the past I tried out Inconsolata before,
but always reverted back to DejaVuSansMono as I never had much luck with
Inconsolata and Konsole.. specifically, the problem I have is:

<http://imgur.com/a/oy0uW>

the top one is Inconsolata, the bottom one DejaVu.. anyone else come across
this behaviour before? I'm never sure of what to google to get it sorted.. and
haven't managed to figure it out

~~~
mh-
yes, I have seen this behavior before.. what font size were you running each
at? Try changing the Inconsolata font size, I'll bet it fixes it.

if I'm right, take a look at: [http://blog.typekit.com/2010/12/14/a-closer-
look-at-truetype...](http://blog.typekit.com/2010/12/14/a-closer-look-at-
truetype-hinting/) and ctrl-f to 'delta' for a partial explanation of what's
happening.

~~~
q_revert
inconsolata vs dejavu with different font sizes.. <http://imgur.com/a/ycol8>

inconsolata seems to act silly regardless of the font size, I guess it might
be just a konsole bug seeing as the font works ok with gnome-terminal etc

------
dtbx
I like M+, a font designed by a japanese.

In particular, I use M+ 1m regular. I like it because I'm shortsighted, so
when I put it in 14pt, I can see very clearly.

------
kodisha
I tried Inconsolata few times, but i could never stick with it...

My history of programming fonts goes something like this:

\- i know they were mono

\- Dejavu sans / vera sans mono

\- proggy clean (back in the days of low resolution, i really loved it )

(switched to mac)

\- monaco

\- andale mono

Once in a while i try some other font, but i keep returning to Andale Mono.
(best MS product ever? :)

------
tallpapab
What I'd like to see (Monty Python Gumby) is some dates on his web page. Maybe
a GitHub page. I got Incosolata a few years ago and have been using it since,
but he says he's working on it. When was the last update?

------
kellishaver
I love this font. Someone on here recommended it to me last year when I was in
need of a fixed-width font that looked decent at larger point sizes (I was
dealing with some cataract issues at the time).

------
lazyjeff
Inconsolata is great for writing URLs in papers because they don't have that
blocky look, and they don't stick out on the page from being twice as wide as
your serif fonts.

------
BadassFractal
Been a really happy DejaVu Sans Mono 10 user for a while now. It was tough
choosing between that and Inconsolata.

------
scotty79
Inconsolata does not look crisp at small sizes for me in Ubuntu. Liberation
Mono 9 is better for me.

------
swah
I'm guessing this is here again just because Matt Cutts tweeted it?

------
hgimenez
recent awesome discovery: you can use Inconsolata in your google docs to paste
in code samples and whatnot, available from the Add Fonts item in the font
picker.

------
zmonkeyz
I currently use this on my 3270 emulator ;)

------
ybother
I prefer Anonymous because it it's legible at _low_ resolutions. Any font can
take advantage of high resolution, it opens up a lot of freedom to the artist.

