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New free monospace programming font by Mark Simonson: Anonymous Pro

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Re: New free monospace programming font by Mark Simonson: Anonymous Pro

#81

Post by __david__ »

doty wrote: post #76
__david__ wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than that--I tend to lean towards words with the same number of characters for variable names which helps make things line up. Variable width would kill that too.

Do you think that you use fixed width fonts because you use words like that, or do you use words like that because you use fixed width fonts?

Well, clearly the fixed width font came first in computer programming. So yeah, I'm sure I pick the words because I use a fixed width font.

Using a variable width font would pose many problems to the editor and you'd have to have tabs on the "inside" of a line (as opposed to just having them on the front). That isn't necessarily bad, just much different from how I currently currently code.

And aligning to a tab stop is not always what I want--you'd need a tab character that didn't mean "go to the next tab stop" but instead meant "line me up with the corresponding tab in the previous and next lines at the minimum possible distance". That seems annoying and probably not worth it.

Re: New free monospace programming font by Mark Simonson: Anonymous Pro

#83

Post by Pistos2 »

I've tried (and continue to try) several programming fonts, but always stick with Terminus. In my opinion, it is the most readable font at 8px, and I like being able to fit as much as possible in a screenful without losing readability. Most of the other fonts I've tried seem more suited for sizes 10pt and larger, and that's fine, I would consider them for usage in my web browser, or some other place. But my console windows are all Terminus.

Re: New free monospace programming font by Mark Simonson: Anonymous Pro

#84

Post by dtf »

psadauskas wrote: post #50
bouncingsoul wrote: post #25

This font is not new. This re-release has been out over a year and its predecessor (Anonymous) has been around almost ten. I've seen it in plenty of "best programming fonts" articles. That said, it is nice to have something different from the usual simple sans model of most modern monospaces (e.g., Deja Vu Sans Mono, Consolas, and Inconsolata). Anonymous has a lot of character – which either interests or annoys you.…

I used it for a little bit, but as always, switched back to Envy Code R. At 12pt on my Mac Terminal, it renders with no anti-aliased blurriness. http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-cod...

I find OS X makes nice fonts like Envy look bloated, bold and ugly when I switch from Apple-prescribed black-on-white - where they look awesome - to my preferred white-on-black scheme. I have to stick to bitmap fonts like Terminus, SGIScreen and Dina when coding on Mac. Linux and Windows do not have this problem.

Re: New free monospace programming font by Mark Simonson: Anonymous Pro

#86

Post by Hes »

doty wrote: post #42

I wonder what the world would be like if somebody designed a nice variable-width font for typesetting code. It would be different than a font designed for setting English, but I wonder if we wouldn't get the same benefits of beauty and legibility. I mean, it's kinda silly that we continue to program in fixed-width type, given what modern software can do with setting type on the fly...

I code in Calibri (variable-width, comes with Vista). I changed a few years ago and never looked back. With proper anti-aliasing and syntax highlighting, it's the perfect font for coding!

Re: New free monospace programming font by Mark Simonson: Anonymous Pro

#87

Post by xenonite »

doty wrote: post #42

I wonder what the world would be like if somebody designed a nice variable-width font for typesetting code. It would be different than a font designed for setting English, but I wonder if we wouldn't get the same benefits of beauty and legibility. I mean, it's kinda silly that we continue to program in fixed-width type, given what modern software can do with setting type on the fly...

using variable-width fonts is especially great for editing LaTeX code, because no intendations are necessary here. It gives me a WYSIWYG feeling.

Re: New free monospace programming font by Mark Simonson: Anonymous Pro

#88

Post by squidbot »

doty wrote: post #77
xiongchiamiov wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets significantly less silly when you look at code that is meant to be aligned, and isn't in a variable-width font.

You can always align variable width fonts with TAB. Because a tab is frequently equivalent to a number of spaces in a fixed width font, we get religious wars about tabs vs spaces. In a variable width font, I presume you would use only tabs. It mat also be the case that c and c-family languages (or python and python-like languages) are not the best choice for such a typesetting system.

I tried for a while to use variable width, but I do a lot of data driven work in Lua and find I make 2 dimensional grids quite frequently, and unfortunately, there's no good way to line them up with a variable width font in a text editor if the field sizes change row to row.

I suppose one answer would be to have a smarter editor that could imbed tables, ala a word processor, but that's certainly not a workflow I'm used to.

Re: New free monospace programming font by Mark Simonson: Anonymous Pro

#89

Post by igravious »

zebra wrote: post #54

Right now I am using Mensch font ( http://robey.lag.net/2010/06/21/mensch-font.html ). It is very readable and solid. I tried right now this post's font Anonymous Pro, also Envy Code R and Inconsolata but returned back to Mensch. They were not bad but I didn't liked them enough to switch.

Mensch-Regular 13 pt. Anti alias

is yum.

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