

Programmatic programming font exploration - Adrock
http://1overN.com

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jacquesm
Hey Adrock,

From this (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2140643>) thread:

Inconsolata

Liberation Mono

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

Terminus.

Menlo.

Monaco

andale mono

More fonts listed in:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4689/recommended-fonts-
fo...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4689/recommended-fonts-for-
programming)

by way of ambirex

~~~
gus_massa
I like "Proggy Clean Slashed Zero", because it is readable at small sizes.
<http://www.proggyfonts.com/index.php?menu=download>

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msarnoff
Also, if you're a LaTeX fan, Computer Modern Typewriter makes a decent editor
font. (<http://canopus.iacp.dvo.ru/~panov/cm-unicode/download.html>).

The download link doesn't have a preview image, but you can see one here:
([http://www.identifont.com/find?font=Computer+Modern+Teletype...](http://www.identifont.com/find?font=Computer+Modern+Teletype&q=Go))
It's like a nicer Courier.

I used to use it for everything, but at work I've settled on 16-point
Inconsolata. On a 2560x1600 display it's very easy on the eyes.

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wzdd
I liked that the largest single-char difference between DejaVu Sans Mono and
Droid Sans Mono is that the Droid version has a G in the style of Google's
favicon.

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WildUtah
I still love my standard XWindows fonts. My favorite is 6x13.

+No fuzzy font-smoothing edges to give you a headache.

+l's, 1', 0's, O's, and symbols are easily distinguished.

+doesn't take up too much space so I can have more code windows open

+wide Unicode support, just in case

+Works great with both programmers' editors. Yes, both. No need to fight.

+stable, proven, familiar, and established

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codex
After searching high and low for many years, I've settled on Akkurat Mono--a
commercial font, well hinted, and gorgeous on Mac OS X.

edit: link:
[http://www.lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/A...](http://www.lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Akkurat+Mono/)

~~~
joakin
Wow thats a beautiful font, thanks

Edit: 190.380 USD or 140 EUR, Really? How can a font be that expensive?... I
could pay 10 to 20 euro but man, the price of this font is almost half of my
rent...

Edit 2: Just discovered Inconsolata, also beautiful, and free
<http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html>

~~~
codex
It's expensive, true: but if you value your eyes, you should get something
which is _not_ fuzzy at common point sizes, but is still readable and with
pleasing shapes even when rendering with sub-pixel anti-aliasing.

I do like Inconsolata as well.

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msarnoff
What's going on with the symbols (%, #, @, etc.) in those comparisons? It
looks like they're getting pulled from Courier New.

I recently discovered the M+ fonts ([http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/mplus-
outline-fonts/design...](http://mplus-fonts.sourceforge.jp/mplus-outline-
fonts/design/index-en.html)). "M+ 1m" is a very nice condensed monospace font
that works well on my 13" MacBook Pro's small screen. However, there seems to
be too much vertical space between lines, and it tends to be blurry at smaller
font sizes, so I wouldn't recommend it 100%.

~~~
stevenbedrick
> What's going on with the symbols (%, #, @, etc.) in those comparisons? It
> looks like they're getting pulled from Courier New.

Mathematica can be really finicky regarding fonts in graphics when it comes to
what it thinks of as "math" symbols. This has to do with the way that it
typesets equations- most fonts won't have glyphs for integral symbols, for
example. Let's say that for some odd reason you wanted to typeset an equation
in Zapfino. Mathematica will be happy to do this, but since Zapfino lacks
integral signs and numerous other mathematical symbols, Mathematica will
helpfully substitute glyphs from its own built-in fonts "as needed."

Unfortunately, it can be overzealous about this- its definition of "as needed"
is awfully broad. I recently had a seriously annoying problem involving a
graph I was trying to export- I'd set the graph up using Optima, but the
graph's title included parentheses and a percentage sign. It all looked fine
on the screen, but upon exporting it I found that the (, ), and % were all in
the wrong font, since Mathematica decided that those were math symbols and as
such needed to be substituted out for glyphs from another font. Turns out
there's a (well-hidden and poorly-documented) way to manually override this
font-embedding behavior- if any Mathematica users out there are interested,
drop me an email.

~~~
Adrock
Someone was kind enough to comment on the post with this gem:

Style["( . ) ( . ) ", 60, FontFamily -> "Comic Sans MS", PrivateFontOptions ->
{"OperatorSubstitution" -> False}]

~~~
stevenbedrick
Yup, that's the one. I would've included it in my post, but I couldn't quite
remember the specific syntax. Even with this option, though, I ran into some
irregularities involving font embedding and Adobe Illustrator.

Supposedly, the newest version of MMA has improved its font embedding behavior
such that it all should "just work," but I haven't had a chance to test it out
yet.

~~~
Adrock
I evaluated this notebook with Mathematica 8, so it unfortunately doesn't just
work.

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yan
My favorite programming font is Pragmata[1]. It is however, commercial and not
very cheap.

[1] <http://www.fsd.it/fonts/pragma.htm>

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blahedo
This is a great visualisation. What's frustrating, and what few font designers
seem to realise, is that it's not enough for two letters to be distinguishable
if they're next to each other; I need to be able to glance at a lowercase L
and know immediately that it isn't the number 1, even if there are no other
l's or 1's in view. Many of these fonts have a very distinct lowercase L but
the number 1 could go either way. Others have a distinctive number 1 but if
you saw a variable named l you'd be momentarily confused.

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Adrock
I'd really appreciate any suggestions for additional fonts to include in my
explorations. Also, any ideas for visualizations you'd like to see are
welcomed!

~~~
jws
I find using black for the common areas to be more useful visually. For the
subtle shape differences, it is easier to pick out a fringe of color against
black than the hue shift of lavender to cyan.

~~~
Adrock
Great point. I'll do this in future posts.

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Adrock
I did a little exploration like this for the new MS fonts:

<http://cronus.ws/~mta/fonts/>

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JoeAltmaier
On my screen the color differences don't appear very obvious. Any ideas?

