

Alternative monospace fonts for programmers - impomatic
http://retrocode.blogspot.com/2010/05/10-alternative-monospace-fonts-for.html

======
jlangenauer
It's kinda hard to evaluate the fonts when only fully capitalised samples are
used. COBOL went out with Clement Atlee - we kinder, gentler Rubyist types
like our lower case code.

~~~
CaptainMorgan
I second the lower case, being a Linux user type. I was also expecting more
analysis in this post than just whether the zeros were slashed or not. adg
below posted a link to a former and similar article that I think has that
analysis I was looking for.

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jarin
Fonts like Consolas or Inconsolata are designed to be used with subpixel
rendering, that's why they look all jacked up without it.

If subpixel rendering hurts your eyes, you probably need to tune it to your
monitor.

~~~
frou_dh
Years ago, I remember doing a terrific amount of whining about how sub-pixel
font rendering was blurry and pointless. But really it's simply a matter of
adjusting to the benefits.

Anyway, I'm using 'Consolas' on Windows and 'Menlo' on Mac and am happy with
both.

~~~
psranga
I second the recommendation to tune the subpixel rendering using your OS's
wizard. Both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 make this very easy. The difference is
very apparent and worth it.

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singular
I use consolas on windows and linux and it is by far the nicest programming
font I've ever used, surprised it didn't get more of a look-in, though
obviously sub-pixel rendering is required for it to not look awful. Pity they
didn't compare it with sp-r turned on. Oh well!

~~~
psranga
My pet peeve is that Eclipse crashes when I set Consolas the default font.
Crash occurred within libpango. So I'm stuck with Andale Mono (a decent
substitute). I will have to look into it again one of these days.

------
Zak
Inconsolata is nice, but the angled quotes annoy me. Fortunately, someone
fixed that: [http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-
dou...](http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-double-
quotes-inconsola/)

------
merraksh
Related discussion on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1058946>

I'm still a bit sad Schumacher Clean never shows up in these lists.

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anatoly
I recommend Terminus (it's not in the list).

~~~
thmz
ProFontWindows is also not in the list. But it's great for a small font-size
but keeping the code readable.

~~~
jasonlotito
Ooo.... thanks for the ProFontWindows recommendation.

~~~
thmz
Just curious: Are you being cynical?

~~~
jasonlotito
Not at all. I switched, and love it. Console windows love the suggestion, and
Eclipse is running with it. I'm still debating on the size, but it was a great
suggestion. I'm glad you replied, as I can now give you another upvote. =)

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dogas
Since I stare at Terminal.app for 10+ hours a day, I'm nearly obsessive-
compulsive about my font setup.

Inconsolata is my font of choice on the list. It looks beautiful, black
background, 15pt, antialiased.

------
JeffJenkins
I've been using the Bitstream Vera fonts for over a year now. The main draws
were:

\- zero distinguished from O, lower case L from 1

\- clean, unpixelated characters

\- supports bolding, so I can use that in my editor's styles

\- is part of a family with a serif and sans serif font, so I can use the same
fonts as my defaults everywhere (and I now notice that HN uses Courier for its
textarea, ick)

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adg
This is basically of a rip-off of this post:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=615088>.

~~~
impomatic
Why is it a rip off? Just because half of the fonts are listed in both
articles?

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BrianHammond
I enjoy TheSansMonoCd by LucasFonts. It costs money though.

<http://imgur.com/kBpMI.png>

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morbidkk
this has been already discussed in detail on SO. link :
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4689/recommended-fonts-
fo...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4689/recommended-fonts-for-
programming)

------
rue
I will offer a name, see if you can find it: SGIScreen.

~~~
BrianHammond
<http://steveblock.com/r/sgiscreen-ttf.tar.gz>

Looks pretty good at 14pt in Terminal.app. Thanks.

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drivebyacct
If you're going to do a comparison of programming fonts at small sizes, at
least bother to get optimal font rendering for small fonts. Your worst looking
fonts are the nicest with proper rendering.

Also "alternative"? Every programmer I know has heard of these...

~~~
ivenkys
"Every programmer I know has heard of these..." - Absolutely.

The frequency of these "lightweight" articles has increased of late (e.g.
Linode,Slicehost gets newest release of Ubuntu, JavaScript starter link,
etc.).

May be this is an indication of the changing demographics here on HN. It is
called Hacker News and calling Consolas, BitStream Vera as alternative is just
"newbism".

