So does anyone at MS read this blog?

Why the F#&* does SQL Enterprise Manager (and even some parts of SQL Server Management Studio) have PROPORTIONAL fonts in their query editors (ever tried to edit SQL in DTS?)

Urge to kill.... Rising....

I tried monoco and inconsolata for a while but innevitably went back to consolas. ms won me over with that font.

vera sans mono. Best across applications and across platforms.

I'm a big fan of ProFont. http://www.tobias-jung.de/seekingprofont/index.html

I've stuck with Monaco 10pt, with black background. It's been my environment of choice for more than a year now, no complaints.

And it's been a success: my colleagues copied my scheme, setting by setting!

I'm a big Consolas fan myself, but of the screenshots above I think I like Courier New second best. I'm not sure why so many people hate it so much.

Lucida Typewriter is an old fave, too.

@David
You can change the font in most of those places (editing SPs and DTS) by right-clicking and selecting "Font..." from the contextual menu. The choices have persisted for me.

I gave it a try, it is definitely nice looking but there is too much space between the lines for my taste. I use 9pt and it still looks good but moving to 8pt to try to get more to fit on the screen makes it hard to read.

I still have to stick with ProFontWindows 9pt. Easy to read and compared to Consolas 9pt you gain about 10 rows and 25 columns on a Dell 24" monitor. Plus it has the slash through the zero which I love!

--- Ken

I'm a Textmate guy, but I wasn't a big fan of Monaco either. I did a bit of searching and discovered DejaVu, an open source font:

http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

I love Monaco and use it all the time... but I find it ugly in your photo. Looks a lot nicer on the Mac.

Also a lot smaller at 12pt -- what resolution screen are you using?

Of those listed, I too prefer Consolas.

Although the good old Courier New typeface has been around for ages, it works. For me personally, it's easy on the eyes and it's great that it's the default font in VC8 (in 'orcas', did they change it?)

Consolas looks promising. Let's see how this works out in Notepad++ and dev-c++.

I've been using "crisp" from proggyfonts for over a year now. That, combined with a black background have made everything much easier on the eyes. It kills me to go to someone elses desk to look over something with them.

Consolas is nice, but I still prefer ProFontWindows.

> I'm a big fan of ProFont.
> I've been using "crisp" from proggyfonts for over a year now.

This comparison is for scalable fonts with aliasing. You're referring to per-pixel bitmap fonts. Different animals entirely. Refer to my old programming fonts post where I compare non-aliased bitmap fonts:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000157.html

Of all the per-pixel, fixed size bitmap fonts, I think Dina is the best.

http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina/

Monaco looks like hell with crazy windows font rendering, agreed. You wouldn't even recognize it on the Mac. I use Monaco at 13pt and it's far shorter than your posted shot. I'll second the question, what screen resolution is that!?

Vera Sans Mono on anything but OSX for me.

Maybe I'm simply too young to get it (having missed most of the years of 80-column displays), but I really don't understand why so many developers seem to prefer fixed-width fonts, anyway. Numerous studies have shown that proportional fonts are easier on the eye and easier to read; once you get used to it, this applies to code as well.

If you've never tried it before, I highly recommend that you try a proportional font for a couple of weeks. Most of the guys at my office use Verdana, while I prefer Calibri.

> That, combined with a black background have made everything much easier on the eyes

Light vs dark is a preference, but it's the *reduction in contrast* that specifically helps readability and reduces eyestrain (<a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000340.html">http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000340.html</a>). Never use pure black or white backgrounds if you can help it.

> Monaco looks like hell with crazy windows font rendering, agreed. You wouldn't even recognize it on the Mac

It's true that OS X and Windows have very different font rendering strategies, so screenshots cannot be directly compared (<a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000884.html">http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000884.html</a>).

I agree with Pete. The Monaco font on Windows looks different (at least the version I have does). It's too big and skinny. On the mac it's way smoother and natural.
Still, my Windows code editors are all on Consolas. I love the fact that Consolas bold has the same width as the normal style. Try that with Courier New :)

Courier New for the win!

@David: I'll have to try a proportional font sometime in the future, see what difference it makes.

I have one problem with proportional fonts - my tabs look squashed (I like having lots of whitespace).

I used to use a TrueType font called Hell's Programmer, but I can't seem to find it on any of my old archives. Very good distinction between all the similar-looking shapes (1, l, I, etc)

> OS X and Windows have very different font rendering strategies.

Duh? That was my point, that windows font rendering totally screws up Monaco.

What's wrong with a pure black background? I love my color scheme, it's so much easier to read then the default where the highlight colors barely stand out from the stark white background.

http://idehotornot.ning.com/index.php/index/show?id=5246300

Envy Code R is optimised for 10 point rather than the 11 illustrated but thanks for the inclusion :)

[)amien

> that windows font rendering totally screws up Monaco.

This obviously gets into the area of pure opinion, but I think Monaco is so inherently screwed up as a typeface that no mere rendering strategy can possibly save it.

Is this on a Mac? Doesn't look one damn bit better to me, although it is WAY more bold ..
http://f.hatena.ne.jp/images/fotolife/y/ymorimo/20070329/20070329212747.png

Those angled "a"s and "q"s are like nails on a chalkboard. Ugh.

White on black is much easier to read than black on white. I can' think of any better color combination.

@extrarice: I was looking for it on Google, but instead I found a font called Anonymous, which seems pretty good. Apparently it's designed as a more legible version of Monaco: http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymous.html. It's free, too.

I still love my Lucida Console, ~8pt. - Lots of lines of code at anything with a vertical of 1024px or more.

Of more concern to me personally is reducing the contrast of the default keyword coloring. I just can't read the default red-white & blue mash.

I like to eyeball blocks of text at a distance and know what they're for as the scroll past.

C#/VB gets shades of gray, comments get purple on pink, help doc comments get green on light green. The background colors are very subtle, hardly noticable when typing, but very noticable when scrolling. Nothing says "disabled" like a big pink block. It's great on code reviews too because uncommented & undocumented code lacks the rhythm of well-styled code. Bad intern. Bad...

> Is this on a Mac?

Yea it's definitely personal opinion. I think it's unarguable that the way Monaco is rendered by the Mac looks nicer though. After looking at that screenshot you must excuse me to go and change my pants :)

I'd say it looks even nicer not in a terminal (TextMate FTW!).

I definitely use Vera Sans Mono a lot on all OS' too, so don't think I'm a fanboy or something :P

Consolas is an outstanding font Jeff, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Your test code is missing the line:

if (Illegal1Uri!=null||1!=1)

>Those angled "a"s and "q"s are like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Not just that, but the [] in Monaco looks way too much like a square box. Is that a missing Unicode character, or an array? Take a guess...

I use Consolas for all my .NET development and like it very much.

At home, I strictly use a Mac and like Monaco.

But this is all personal stuff. Half the fonts shown above look OK to me, honestly.

Give me Vera Sans or give me Arial!

Why all monospace? :)

I know I'm vastly in the minority here, but I do my coding with a proportional font. Indents still work fine since they're all spaces, and I've found that besides indents, lining up characters is almost entirely unimportant in my code. Proportional is easier to read in general - so why not use it?

I would love to use a font other than Courier New, but unfortunately all font designers stick with pretty much ASCII / ISO-8859-x only fonts. Since I program in a Japanese environment (with Japanese comments), using a font other than MS Gothic (Japanese version) tends to screw up editors that don't do automatic font swapping. It's frustrating when I see nicer fonts that other people can use...

tried 'em all... profont, truetype version, is the winner for me.

I spent a few hours several months ago trying to find the perfect programming font for me and I settled on Dina - I love it. I just installed Consolas to check it out and didn't like it as much (not really sure why as it looked nice on the screenshots) at 9pt (which is where I run Dina) - however, I changed it to 10pt and it looked better. I will give it a shot tomorrow to see how much my eyes like (or don't like) it.

Consolas is a sweet font.. http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=2499.0

I like a proportional font, Trebuchet MS. For two years I've used proportional fonts, and now that I am used to it I think that non-proportional fonts are a little bit ugly :-)

Just my opinion :-P

Does anyone else find the Incolsolata example way too blurry to read? All of the other examples are sharp and crisp, while that one seems to blur (laptop LCD, cleartype enabled).

I gotta go with the proportional crowd here. I moved away from monospaced a few years ago, and I just can't go back to it now. Currently using Vrinda (either a Vista or Office 2K7 font - not sure which), but when I'm on an XP machine it's Lucida Sans Unicode.

I'm with David; a proportional font really does work for programming--but you need to give yourself a week or two to get used to it (and perhaps use tabs instead of spaces). I've been doing it for years; first Verdana and now Tahoma.

Anyone know if the truetype version of profont is scalable and/or aliasing? (Sorry Damian, couldn't resist)

Folks who like ProFont might like MonteCarlo. It's somewhat similar, but includes a good-looking bold weight.

OptiSmall for me, I love how many lines of code I can fit on screen with everything perfectly legible.

http://proggyfonts.com/download/example_opti_small_bp.gif
www.proggyfonts.com

Be Cool...Im realy...

I've been doing it for years; first Verdana and now Tahoma.

Certain types of data are easier to parse (with your eyes and brain) in monospace. Some types of data are even impossible to read without it (i.e. tablature for string instruments).

Other than that, I'm just anal about lining up things in my code (parens, brackets, etc.), and it never fails that someone not using monospace used too many tabs to line up something in their editor (or worse yet used spaces and/or had an unusual number of spaces set up for their tabs) because they had too many characters on a line that take up less space than the characters on the previous line.

I just generally prefer to use fonts that are both monospace and make it easy to tell the difference between l and 1, or 0 and O without having to double check it. I take the time to write them differently by hand, why shouldn't the person that made the font do the same?

ClearType is specifically designed to blur the image at the precision of the output device - standard anti-aliasing is essentially the the same technique applied at the frame-buffer which may not match the device.

ie. The necessity of ClearType is proof that your display does not have the precision you desire.

I still use CRTs at home for the simple reason that no LCD can match the mighty Trinitron's dotpitch. At work, I recently got a new LCD (SyncMaster 225BW) which has finally matched the clarity of the Trinitrons but only if I use it's native resolution (1680x1050). The Trinitrons limiting resolution is *far* higher.

So, I hereby coin my conclusion thusly;

If ClearType makes any font look better on your display; your display is rubbish.

What about larger monospace fonts? My laptop's natural resolution is 1680x1050, so in order to be able to see anything at all (!), I jack up my fonts to a minimum of 14pt, maybe 16pt.

I was looking around and couldn't find ANYTHING that looked decent at 16pt; all the specialized programmer's fonts (yes, that means you ProFont) are designed to look good at 8pt. Gross!

The question is: which one scales up better? Consolas is the obvious option, but are there others?

I alternate between Consolas and Vera Sans Mono. Both have details I like a lot. The half-serif lowercase L in Vera Sans Mono is brilliant; Consolas’ looptail lowercase G is gorgeous; the dotted zero in Vera Sans Mono is much less objectionable than the standard slashed zero; the curly quotes in Consolas are really, really obviously curled; and on and on.

Unfortunately, Consolas has no box drawing characters, which means I can’t use it as a terminal font.

Damn Aristotle, you said just what I was going to say!

Have a look at this screenshot (taken with Jing - recommended!). Consolas is missing the box drawing characters around the dialog box, but also the "scroll bar" along the bottom right, and even the right arrow at the top right.

http://www.users.on.net/~arankine/consolas.png

Andrew,

LCDs are ONLY clear at their native resolutions. Anyway, I couldn't use my 21" Trinitron at higher than 1280x960. I really can't accept that any electron-gun device can be more precise than a reasonable quality LCD. In my view, LCDs are too crisp without ClearType. I find ClearType makes the text look more "robust", more like printed text than without, LCD or CRT.

My choice of font is Monospace 821 BT. I've tried Consolas, but I find that the 10pt size, which should be the size I want, is no larger than the 9pt. 11pt is too big. Anyone else feel like they left out 10pt?

courier fits fine, don't need another font.

I'm pleased that you included Pragmata. I seriously thought nobody knew about that one. It's the only font I ever actually paid money for, and it's been an absolute pleasure to code in since way before Consolas ever came out.

As for Consolas, it is extremely readable and a fitting standard programming font, albeit clearly lacking in personality. :)

Yeah, I also see that Inconsolata image all blurred up; surely the font can't be that bad.

Inconsolata has no hinting hence the blurring as it lands whever it likes. The others tend to fit into whole pixels vertically.

Inconsolata is very nice at larger sizes however needs bold/italic variants.

Those people suggesting Dina/Proggy etc. are totally missing the point here which is to talk about scalable fonts which utilise ClearType. Check Jeff's previous posts for bitmapped pixel font recommendations.

If you like your fonts sharp but enjoy ClearType definitely try Envy Code R at 10 point. It's like a pixel font but with smooth corners and diagonals. As a bonus it includes an italic-as-bold variant to let you have italics within Visual Studio.

[)amien

By the way, Monaco was designed by icon icon Susan Kare, IIUC.

Like James Ellis (@03:38 PM) I use DejaVu Sans Mono. Bitstream Vera, with better Unicode coverage.

This Consolas font is great!
But looks good only with ClearType turned on.

What kind of colours or themes are you people using in Visual Studio?

Posted by Andrew R: "I still use CRTs at home for the simple reason that no LCD can match the mighty Trinitron's dotpitch."

Isn't that advantage gone after a year or so with the degradation of the screen?

When you add fonts to your Windows system, they generally show up for all applications---except Command Prompt (cmd.exe). I found it was non-trivial to get most fonts working there. I ended up hacking some metadata in sheldon4.fon to make it work. If anyone is interested, I've put it up my version at

http://grosskurth.ca/typography/sheldon4.fon

Just drop it into it into WINDOWS\Fonts and then you should see a second 7x12 entry for Raster Fonts in the CommandPrompt properties called SheldonCmd.

Courier New all the new.
I don't like any of the other fonts, but I guess that's mostly because I'm really used to Courier New.

You should try to Lucida Console font which comes with windows.
It looks great with ClearType.

Have you tried the IBM3270 font? I've been using it for a pretty long time now. Similar to Consolas and very easy to read.

http://codedwarf.com/pcsansi.fon

Looks best when the size is set to 12. Here's the example:

http://codedwarf.com/images/ibm3270.png

I also use lucida console, 9pt. It allows me to have more code on the screen than with consolas. I also think that cleartype and consolas on lower point sizes is pretty bad (but that's personal preference I think). (I use 20.1" monitors, 1600x1200 TFT)

The only thing better than Comic Sans in your code is Arial. ;)

Seriously, I don't know if I'll ever give up Andale Mono, but I'll admit that at this point it's just 7 years of familiarity. Although it really looks quite similar to Inconsolata, with Verdana's x-height. Speaking of, I've become accustomed to mixing Verdana and Andale Mono these days, sans-serif doesn't pain me like it did before cleartype.

I just noticed that my IDE is set to use Comic Sans for comments. SWEET.

Just shows how little coders are valued.

Engineering reduces coders to cheap components and eye sight damage does not matter much in the great scheme.

Am I the only one who uses Lucida Console? Admittedly it's been a few years since I did my font search, but LC was the only typeface I found to be clear at small point sizes.

Nice one, I've been using monaco so far but I disliked a couple of things about it. Thanks for recommending Consolas (I guess I missed the previous posts you made about it). I just tried it and looks like it fits my needs/tastes.

I like Consolas and Profont.

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono from Gnome is also very cool because of its copyright. You can copy it, redistribute it, and even modify it given that you use another name for the result.

These were my conclusions in a comparative of programming fonts I did a while ago: http://mundogeek.net/archivos/2006/11/18/fuentes-para-programacion/

Jeff: using Mac font rendering, Consolas looks just terrible at any size below about 16 (much more of a mess than any of the screenshots you posted here). And I'm no giant fan of anti-aliased Monaco either; the glory of Monaco is that it's the first widely-used good-looking monospace pixel font, and Susan Kare managed to make it look good, and stylistically consistent, at 9, 10, and 12 sizes. But 9-point bitmap Monaco is amazing (especially since they tweaked 1, i, l, I to be more distinguishable sometime in the Mid-90's).

But with antialiasing turned on on the Mac, and at sizes &#8805; 12, particularly for light-on-dark schemes, there are many monospace fonts that look much better than either Consolas or Monaco.

I've been using Proggy for some time now and warmly recommend it, especially because of it's crispness, but I think I'll give Consolas a quick go.

You can find the Proggy fonts here:
http://www.proggyfonts.com/index.php?menu=download

You should take a look at "Crisp"(TrueType) and "Proggy Clean(slashed zero, bold punctuation)"(bitmap).

I use an ageing version CodeWright that allows a different fonts for screen display and printing. Fonts good for screen display are seldom good for printing also.

What would you recommend for paper output?

Is there a font that is good for both?

Currently for paper output I an using Courier New where it works well - serifs are good for paper it seems - and until I read this Lucida Console for screen.

Also note, the point sizes I speak of are Mac point sizes. Your 11-point consolas example is about 14.5 point on a Mac. :)

Envy R is the winner for me. Before it, I was using Dina.

Trying out Consolas today, very nice. Using 12pt and [255,255,215] as text background colour.

I have tried most of the fonts mentioned in previous posts, but finally settled on one nobody has mentioned yet: Bitstream's Reader Sans Mono.

For me this is the ultimate font for editing code.

> Anyone know if the truetype version of profont is scalable and/or aliasing? (Sorry Damian, couldn't resist)

I posted a messages saying the TrueType version of ProFont is scalable and aliasing. It seems to have been deleted... Here are some screen grabs:

TrueType @ 7pt: http://s3.amazonaws.com/damian-public/images/codinghorror/ProfontTrueType7pt.Png
TrueType @ 9pt: http://s3.amazonaws.com/damian-public/images/codinghorror/ProfontTrueType9pt.Png
TrueType @ 12pt: http://s3.amazonaws.com/damian-public/images/codinghorror/ProfontTrueType12pt.Png
TrueType @ 16pt: http://s3.amazonaws.com/damian-public/images/codinghorror/ProfontTrueType16pt.Png

And per-pixel bitmap verison for comparison:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/damian-public/images/codinghorror/ProfontNONTrueType12pt.Png

On a Mac you can't beat Monaco. (I used Consolas on Winodows). The only problem with Monaco is that it doesn't have a bold version, so if your editor likes to highlight certain things in bold, you lose out on that feature.

> Not just that, but the [] in Monaco looks way too much like a square box.

Again, this is Windows only rendering that makes it look like that... It looks nothing like a 'missing unicode character' (in your code? really? ok...) on the Mac.

just out of curiosity why was calibiri not included? it's offered as a download for VS 2005 and I find it to be better than consolas; it packs more onto the screen and remains readable

Long live Courier New :)

I just don't see what you have against Courier New. I tried Consolas, and it just doesn't compare:
- it's too small at 10p, my fav size
- it's too large at the next size, 11p
- it saves *horizontal* space which I have plenty anyway, since my code is formatted at 80 columns and my 24" lcd is WIDE
- it looks crowded
- Courier is more spacious, the letters better defined

What exactly do you *see* in Consolas, if you don't mind me asking?

Anonymous. Anonymous anonymous anonymous.

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono if anonymous is not avail.

I'm surpised to see 11pt fonts on here, I've been using Consolas 8pt ever since I discovered the font.

I prefer to have a smaller font and be able to see more of my code at once. I find having a pair of 20" LCDs running natively at 1600x1200 helps too.

Terminus is nice for bitmap, Vera Sans Mono for antialiased. I used to use squinty little fonts (Vera at 8 or 9 pt*), but now I have a maximized editor on one monitor and everything else on the other.

* Those are real points, which are an absolute measure. If something at "9 pt" is different sizes on different OSes, then (at least) one OS is _broken_.

Everyone who was even remotely surprised by the legion of Mac users insisting that Monaco looks wonderful on the Mac, raise your hand...

http://forums.programming-designs.com/viewtopic.php?pid=3338

Thanks to the link above (which I found via del.icio.us), I started using Triskweline (at size 10) a few weeks ago. I really like it so far; it's very clean.

DejaVu Sans Mono.. which I use.. is perfect for me! Looks awesome in VIM, and Eclipse too!

Have you tried Terminus? It's a fantastic monospace font - really easy on the eyes for long hours at the screen.

http://www.is-vn.bg/hamster/jimmy-en.html

@David Markel

I fell your pain with SQL Enterprise manager, and other parts of the client tools. Why do I have to feel like I'm using Win95 while working with MSSQL?

1) Turn off antialias.
2) Install terminus.
3) Rinse and repeat.

Love the comments about Enterprise Manager! Even MySQL has a better interface and that is open source! MS really needs to do something bout that.

Back on the topic, quite frankly I like Courier New alot (I am typing in courier new as we speak). I use it all day baby!

No fixedsys love?

In VS I have always found that fixedsys (which there's a TTF version of floating around out there) just draws me back every time ... Consolas I use for just about every other monospaced need, but in Visual Studio it's fixedsys every time.

As for colors -- I prefer dark/midnight blue background with white text.

Okay, I'm a freak. I admit that. - Of the fonts here I agree, Consolas is the way to go, but I don't always want monospace fonts. I also like Lucida Console (which someone mentioned before), but I'm a very large fan of Verdana, yes Verdana. For Code. Honest.

Franklin Gothic Medium , light colors on black is what I use, love it. easy on the eys.

Inconsolata looks all washed out and inconsistent on my Windows machine. The Mac screenshot on the site makes it look much better, though.

Monospace fonts are pointless nowadays anyway, though. Do your eyes a favor and use a real font.

Just for your information, in case you like it. There is another fine console font available for free from Raize Software
http://www.raize.com/DevTools/Tools/RzFont.asp

However, with the event of Consolas, I think it's days are counted, Consolas really beats any console font out there. I love it too!

I would try Terminus as a font.

Try the coder font "DINA"

http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina/

Hehe,

I shit you not Jeff, my co-worker about 3 cubicles over uses Comic Sans in Visual Studio. He claims it's easier to read.... :O

Inconsolata is a coding font designed to look good in print (at high resolution). In fact, much of its subtlety is only apparent when printed out at 300dpi or higher. This is clearly somewhat of a niche font.

I find nothing beats Vera Sans Mono for my purposes, which involves a lot of real time programming in C. Vera Sans Mono is a monospace font that reads much like a proportional font. It has compact character spacing, but is more legible for me than any of the other fonts shown above. I've spent too much time trying these and many more. Vera Sans Mono seems to have a slightly larger x-height, which may be what gives it the edge over Consolas.

Good text editors allow different fonts to be specified for screen and print. Try setting screen to Vera Sans Mono or Consolas and print to Inconsolata.

i use bitstream vera sans mono for *everything*--fixed font emails in thunderbird, code in visual studio, securecrt terminals and textpad come to mind. i just love the zero in that font.

and since you are bringing up fonts and colors again, jeff, can you possibly change your blog colors to be white text on a black background? not pure black or pure white of course (hardocp.com hurts my eyes after reading one article), but something besides what you have now? that would be just swell.

Fixedsys 10

I'm actually a fan of the X11 classic 6x13 fixed font. My monitors have big enough pixels that it works rather well for me.

I believe the particular application affects the choice of font. Some older applications, Programmers File Editor for example, just dont render text right with an OpenType font. A bitmap font, however, works great. PFE uses its own edit control; that probably factors into the display ugliness.

Another factor in choosing a font is if the application is a GUIish console one, especially using line graphic characters. You're pretty much stuck using a font like Terminal in that case.

I use Courier New 10pt and it rocks.

You're all wrong.. "Courier" - not "Courier New" rocks.
crips, clear, and an good number of lines fit on screen (it has less inter-line spacing)

Fixedsys +1
White on Black +1 -- I actually prefer Light Grey on Black, less eyestrain.

Consolas is a nice looking font, for sure, but some of the characters are a little too alike : l and 1 for example. The c isn't rounded the same top and bottom; the += isn't lined up properly and - is too short (something Monaco gets right). Those sorts of issues wouldn't drive me as nuts as Jeff's chosen colour scheme though o_O Do you suffer from ADHD or something? :D

CONSOLAS-4-LIFE-MAYNE

A personal preference, but the font renderer used looks like a pretty poor one compared to OSXes. Also, it's difficult to judge the differences in the typeface when distracted by the (unsightly) choice of colors.

I listened to advise and set Consolas as my programming font. Nowadays I prefer Comics, it creates a warm fuzzy feeling inside and I get a lot of attention from coworkers. Try it - you might love it.

"If you've never tried it before, I highly recommend that you try a proportional font for a couple of weeks."

The options for the editor for delphi only shows select fixed fonts. Neat, huh?

Try assembly once in a proportional font and you'll switch it right back.

The real reason proportional fonts aren't used is so that comments and array data can be lined up in columns.

I have found that the "best" font varies greatly between machines (of course), but also between apps on the same machine. The font that looks good in Notepad2 looks awful in UltraEdit, for example.

Try TheSans Mono from Lucas Fonts. Not free, but worth it. You also probably need to convert it to TTF before it starts displaying properly on screen.

Consolas was designed by Lucas Fonts, and has some essence of TheSans Mono.

Amen to Franklin Gothic Medium!

Jeff - Here's a screenshot of your code in FGM:
http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1494100014&size=o

Fascinating. I don't have a big stake in this, but I did notice that in the examples Consolas loops pretty good as well as having nice weight while keeping characters cleanly separated.

One factor concerning Courier New, what I mainly use now for code snippets in documentation as well as when viewing code in editors, Notepad, etc., is that it is a serif font, and the others are all sans serif. I think this has an influence on acceptability for different people depending on their comfort with serif and sans serif. (Just speculating).

I can understand why monospace is used though. I work without tabs (and tabs are expanded to spaces on entry) so that the ASCII "art" of code layout is preserved, along with nice arrangements of two-dimensional material in comments.

I am extremely accustomed to Courier New (and face="monospace" in web presentation of code-like material). I am not sure I can change to consolas in published "code" but I am willing to try it in my editor to see if it eases things for me.

A few months back, Red Hat released a set of fonts called Liberation for free use. Among them is Liberation Mono, which I've become a huge fan of and have taken to using for code. They're available as standard TrueType fonts here: https://www.redhat.com/promo/fonts/

Wow, Consolas is my favorite by far.

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).

I can't believe no one said

BSU-Kermit.

I really like that and Dina.

I have used Consolas and liked it as well. The only problem with most programming fonts is that the sizes are generally fixed to 8 or 10.

...

Greg Bowers,

"LCDs are ONLY clear at their native resolutions."
Well, yes, that's my point. What about CRTs?

"Anyway, I couldn't use my 21" Trinitron at higher than 1280x960."
So your eyes were the limiting factor?
In other words; the device achieved the precision you desired.

"I really can't accept that any electron-gun device can be more precise than a reasonable quality LCD."
It doesn't take much deep thought to realise that the reverse must be true;
* An electron gun's precision is dependant on the incorporeal nature of magnetic lines of force - a thing which has only the Planck length as it's natural barrier to absolute precision - and the optical convertor could be as small as 1 molecule with no physical connections.
* An LCD's precision is limited by the mechanical size that workable (say 10^15 molecules per) liquid crystals can be arranged in helical patterns and the wiring needed to electrically address each of them.
In other words; A CRT-esque system is theoretically capable of a few hundred billion times the precision of LCDs.
The capitalistic nature of our encomony though has prevented the making of decent screens (of either type) - apparently our eyes aren't worth it and our wallets voted for cheaper, smaller, crappier displays.

"In my view, LCDs are too crisp without ClearType. I find ClearType makes the text look more "robust", more like printed text than without, LCD or CRT."
Fair enough. That is an entirely subjective statement. I must admit, some of the fonts discussed here (I've tried them out) have been the best I've ever seen ClearType look. I still don't like the effect though.

> 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

I can't help it, but ClearType always looks blurry to me and hurts my eyes. From the screenshots above I find Vera Sans Mono to still look acceptable, but I still prefer to turn ClearType off.

And yes, I'm using TFTs.

I'd like to play with my font and color settings, but I'm stuck with VS2003 which makes switching UI schemes a pain. Apparently there is a good VS2003 add-in called VS-Styler, which makes switching around color and font settings really easy. Unfortunately, it was hosted on gotdotnet.com, which was phased out. anyone know where I can find it? Google is no help at all.

>> 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

I've realised that having fewer lines of code on the screen can be a good thing. It unconsciously forces you to make your methods shorter.

Anyway. I'm a BitStream Vera Mono guy, it's so well done that sometimes I forget it's a monospaced font, but I like the look of Consolas a lot. Also I saw my workmates using Delphi in Twilight and thought they were crazy. Then I started to notice a bit of eyestrain so I tried it for a while and loved it. I don't know why VS2005 Express doesn't have themes. I tried setting it to white on black, but it is a lot of hard work to change all the settings.

I am starting to wonder if I am just a real odd ball.

I am a huge fan of Arial size 10 on a nice black background.

I do have to say I do like the Consolas font so I might try it out. As long as it looks clean and works with my background then I can always work with it.

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.

To me Consolas wins hands down.

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 ;]

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?

I believe I have discovered the ultimate ProFont rendering.

The sad part is that I can't reproduce it when I have console access to the machine.

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/1276/profontexcellenthintingwv7.png

I installed the ProFontWindows "tweaked" TrueType edition on my Vista machine at home.

Sometime later in the day, I did a Remote Desktop connection to my work machine, where I have ProFontWindows (the .FON version) installed.

Lo and behold, it rendered as in the image above, instead of the expected bitmap form of ProFont, which is odd, since the remote desktop has only the bitmap version (.FON) installed, not TrueType.

It's as if the local version of the font is being rendered (better) by the remote side?

Try as I might, I cannot get it to render exactly like that on my Vista machine though - I tried disabling ClearType, disabling any type of font smoothing whatsoever, but no go. And when I go to work, with physical access to the machine, it doesn't render like that either.

This is what it renders like currently on Vista:

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/6774/profontcrappyhintingsn5.png

More compressed and compact, you'll notice. Changing the point sizes doesn't reproduce the desired rendering.

Any suggestions on how to get it to render like the first screen cap?

Argh!

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>

Consolas is great but it doesn't work over RDP to XP or Win2003 (Clear Type doesn't work). Yes, Vista will display Clear Type, but the performance of Vista via RDP doesn't compare with the snap of XP/Win2003. I do a lot of dev work inside of VPC/VS and typically connect via RDP. Leaning towards monico to fill that need.

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.

For the windows(yech) users: http://dejavu.sourceforge.net

Very nice roundup of some of the best fonts available.
Inconsolata looks fuzzy in your shot and on my 19" LCD screen too.
You might want to add Droid Sans Mono to the mix. And perhaps move Envy Code R next to Pragmata. Has anyone else notice Envy Code R just might be a Pragmata Killer?!

I've just finished true-type hinting Inconsolata for Windows ClearType. It now looks alot more legible.

Take a peek: http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/4945/incosolatacleartypeey5.png

monofur: monospaced, and curly. http://www.dafont.com/monofur.font

Glad to see you've warmed up to ClearType, and in turn, Consolas. It's become my favorite font and I've been wavering between different fonts over the past couple years.

Consolas also does a great job being used at different pt sizes (it depends on the screen I'm using). My only gripe with ClearType is that nobody makes pivoted LCD displays where the subpixels are rotated. Well at least not at an affordable level (about $4k for such a screen where as I can just rotate a $250 screen and get good enough quality).

I use terminus

Two votes for Dina and one for Courier New !!

Only Dina and Courier New are comfortable to read on the LCD monitor at my workplace... In fact, I requested for a CRT monitor at my workplace, but they dont have any :(

I am looking to buy a new monitor for my home PC (I have been using a 15 inch one since last 5 years). From what I have read so far, LCD monitor technology is not yet mature, refresh rates are not yet good enough. I think I will get a 19 inch CRT monitor (though viewable area is less) and wait for 5 more years till LCD screens are able to perform as good as CRT.

I find cleartype much more irritating than Standard setting. It makes text look like it has been manually typewritten using a ribbon having excess ink !!

> 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?

You... did... use "GIVEN" ironically... right?

It's just that, one of the primary side effects of Capitalism is that very little is ever GIVEN to anyone.

Also, responding to a point about Capitalism preventing the production of decent quality screens, by saying that Capitalism gave us the screens we have - as an defense of Capitalism, perhaps lacking.

Er, to actually attempt to contribute something to this thread, I I have to seriously recommend the Liberation font family for very small font sizes:

- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts</a>

A lot of "programmer fonts" are fine until about 8pt, but personally I would like them to go much smaller. Unfortunately there seem to be very few fonts that actually look /nice/ below this (ahah) point.

David Mitchell's recommendation of Calibri as a proportional font is quite interesting. Calibri is in fact the first font specified in Coding Horror's own body text style (cf. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/styles-site.css).

Among fixed-width fonts, Lucas De Groot's Consolas is exceptionally good. Amen, amen.

It might interest you to know that APress typesets code in its books with an earlier font from de Groot: TheSansMonoCondensed-Semilight (from his extensive TheSans family). Both Consolas and TheSans have the quality which Jim Lipsey praised in Vera Sans Mono: "reads much like a proportional font".

To my eye, the most obvious difference between Consolas and TheSans is that Consolas has lining figures only. TheSans, on the other hand, is available with four different styles of figures (lining, table, old style, and table hanging).

In addition to its basic elegance, two features of TheSansMonoCondensed deserve special mention. First, condensed width reduces the amount of white space which thin letters must attempt to fill, thereby reducing the inherent awkwardness of monospaced letterforms. Second, hanging figures strongly allude to a form most commonly associated with proportional fonts. TheSansMonoCondensed pushes the limits of a monospaced font which reads like a proportional font.

If legibility is the chief concern, those who hold fast to a preference for proportional fonts might as well go all the way and use a proportional serif. De Groot has a noteworthy font in this category as well: TheSerif. His type foundry's URL is http://www.lucasfonts.com/.

Correction: Consolas has table figures (fixed with, fixed height, vertically aligned).

Doh! Correction again: Consolas supports both hanging or lining numerals, but this feature requires OpenType support (<a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/ascender/consolas/familytree.html">http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/ascender/consolas/familytree.html</a>). I don't suppose there are any OpenType-aware IDE's out there? :)

well, Monaco on Win32 and Monaco on Mac are two completely different species...

http://brianhammond.com/bpMonoScreenshot.png

My favorite is BPMono

Hey, Font of The God isn't even monospace. You can't program with non-monospace font.

My screen is ~130dpi, and I prefer Andale Mono on the Mac.

Liberation Mono > *

I tried to use Consolas, but the insane MS guys hard-coded the subpixel-ordering into it, so I just cannot use it at all on my BGR screen. Why does everyone in the whole world assumes there's only one type of LCD subpixel ordering? I'm back to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono for now.

Anyway, did you ever try to code XML in one of these fonts? I think that Envy R, for example, is totally useless because the < and > characters are somehow bad so that the tag boundaries are not easily distinguishable.

Profont vs Proggy.
Fonts are all subjected to your system settings and IDE. Some fonts work great and some don't depending on your monitor, IDE and brightness. ProFont is a great font for bringing out consistent neat structure (works great all the time), but the individual glyphs are not known to be easy on the eyes compared to Proggy or other "cleaner" fonts. However, Profont's arrangement of characters is great, consistent and very readable. Proggy collides and isn't consistent in their arrangement.

Anonymous vs himself.
As for Anonymous, it depends. It's a nice artistic font that collides slightly, but is consistently spaced, and in order for it to be reliably good for programming and very readable, you'll need to customise it and hope it works good for our IDE (many times it may not.). But here's an EXCELLENT Anonymous font setup on FlashDevelop (on dark background). Run this WITHOUT ClearType to ensure it's crisp and collisions ain't too bad. Notice the great compactness, sementic readability (due to the serifs) and clarity, something you wouldn't aspect from a font that would have notoriously been considered "too decorative" and messy.

Pt 6:
http://home.graffiti.net/kidopreneur/anon6pt.JPG
Pt 7:
http://home.graffiti.net/kidopreneur/anon7pt.JPG

Can increase size higher too if you want but these are the 2 best sizes for viewabaility. But it sure beats ProFont in this situation. Sure, it may not be as neat as ProFont, but considering the better compactness, size options, Anonymous well-defined serifs and easier-on-the-eyes glpyhs, Anonymous wins in this aspect.

After going through Courier New, Profont, Consolas, Monaco etc., my favourite programming font ended up being Panic Sans, which comes with Coda, a Mac IDE that I don't use. For developers whose point size of preferance is closer to 12 points than 6, it's perfect. Sample: http://purefiction.net/paste/panicsans.png

none

Ooooh.. that Inconsolata is intriguing... I think it has some similarities to FreeMono which is also very nice.

DejaVu Sans Mono and Liberation Mono are my choice.
Liberation Mono works perfect at any size.

http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

https://fedorahosted.org/releases/l/i/liberation-fonts/

Anyone else have any problems with unprintable ascii characters when using consolas on Visual Studio 2008?

rawMessage.Split('
');

The character to split on is the ASCII SOH character (0x01).

When using consolas, the whole line just disappears in the IDE, switch to Courier New, and the line re-appears.

I would use FreeMono in windows but it has some strange points on the top and bottom.

Panic Sans is a repackaged <a href="http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2007/04/in_love_with_a_font.html">DejaVu Sans Mono</a>.

My Top 5 fonts for programming:

1/ Bitstream Vera Sans Mono
2/ Monaco
3/ Anonymous
4/ Courier New
5/ Consolas

If the license of Consolas is more liberal, it may make no.2 or no.3 on my list :-)

Wow!! It's really amazing!!! Cool man...

Prima Sans Mono - a variative to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, but with modifications. The top 4 fonts for programming are:

1/Prima Sans Mono
2/Segoe Print (a proportional font, but lacks box drawing characters)
3/Monofur
4/Monaco Tweaked (a modified version of Monaco)

You alternate between Prima and Vera Sans Mono. Both have details you like a lot. The half-serif lowercase L in Vera Sans Mono is brilliant; but Prima Sans Mono is not; the dotted zero in Vera Sans Mono is much less objectionable than the standard slashed zero; but Prima Sans Mono is not; the curly quotes in Lucida Console are really, really obviously curled; and on and on. Two votes for Courier New, and one for Fixedsys Excelsior.

Fixedsys Excelsior 3.00: unicode font similar to the ASCII fixedsys. Can be modified. The font file name is FSEX300.ttf. Anonymous has a backslashed zero but Courier New, Prima Sans Mono and other console fonts don't.

Are there any results?

One font wasn't hinted. Can you add hinting to the fonts???

Consolas: looks good with ClearType.
Inconsolata: doesn't look good. needs to hint with a program.
Monaco: looks great with ClearType.
Envy R: looks good with ClearType.
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono: looks good with ClearType. a few characters are mapped to notdef.
Prima Sans Mono: looks good with ClearType. a few characters are mapped to notdef.
Pragmata: looks great with ClearType.
Courier New: looks great with ClearType.
Lucida Typewriter/Lucida Console: looks great with ClearType.
Comic Sans MS: looks great with ClearType. can be used for text.
Andale Mono: looks great with ClearType.

You tried to go to that link, but the administrator had deleted the image and got the message. ImageShack deleted incosolatacleartypeey5.png, because it's unable to access it.

You can find Hell's Programmer here:

http://bebop.tesuji.org/performancedata/index.html

It's not a Trutype font, but a bitmap font for Mac and Windows. I'm not sure the Mac version of it is recognized by Mac OS X anymore, but I'm pretty sure the Windows version still works.

Bitmap fonts are some of the best for programming in my opinion.

Brought up in the world of UNIX, I've always been a big fan of the original misc-fixed fonts from The X Window System. While I adore Dina, I never really liked how wide it was. I want more code to fit on the screen. Hence, the 6x13 version is perfect.

http://www.ank.com.ar/fonts/