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Programming Fonts – Test Drive

app.programmingfonts.org

171–180 of 289 posts

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#171
post #44

I'm surprised that the list doesn't mention consolas. It ships default with visual studio and it's so good that I use it on arch Linux as my terminal font and with intellij. It was designed with programming in mind and has some nifty characteristics like a slash through zero. This list also misses out on 'operator mono' which is a well thought out font for programming.

It is a Windows default font. Since you need admin rights to install fonts in Windows, it may be the only good programming font a corporate user have.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consolas is a proprietary font, and this list includes only free and/or open source fonts. It does include the similar Inconsolata.

Though Inconsolata was inspired by Consolas, I wouldn't consider it all that similar. For example, the digits in Inconsolata are much closer to the Franklin Gothic model. Also, Consolas has excellent hinting for Windows, while Inconsolata was originally designed with no hinting at all. They're not drop-in replacements.

I’m a fan of Inconsolata, and it’s my daily driver in terminals and editor. Thank you.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#174
post #120
post #61

I've been using DejaVu Sans Mono for quite some time. It's a nice font. It used to be the default monospace font in KDE, until they switched to Noto Mono. Autohinting setting for fontconfig makes it look better for me: DejaVu Sans Mono true

I'm in the same boat, every time one of these threads pop up I try a few different fonts recommended here but I always end up going back to DejaVu. It think it looks pretty good, it has good Unicode coverage, it's supported out of the box on most distros... It's weird because I can be pretty snobbish and opinionated with a lot of programming-related stuff (I use a very expensive keyboard, a large 4k screen, a heavily…

I switched from using devavu for years finally to iosevka

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#175
post #161

It drives me crazy when fonts look at the old convention of "strike through zero" and for some reason decides they need to be different from the convention and allow the strike to pass the edges of the zero circle. "Anka/Coder" in the linked article is guilty of this. When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero, it's a Danish or Norwegian "Ö" (Ø). It's been a part of their alphabet for centur…

> "When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero, it's a Danish or Norwegian "Ö" (Ø). It's been a part of their alphabet for centuries."

You can't please all the people, all of the time. There are ~21 million people living in Scandinavia - and for them, that could indeed be somewhat of an issue. What about the rest of the planet?

> "By badly thought out design and a need to be different for no reason, you just returned to square one, because the font is now unreadable for anyone that knows or works with the letter Ø."

Out of curiosity, what would you consider to be a better design?

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#176
post #175
post #161

It drives me crazy when fonts look at the old convention of "strike through zero" and for some reason decides they need to be different from the convention and allow the strike to pass the edges of the zero circle. "Anka/Coder" in the linked article is guilty of this. When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero, it's a Danish or Norwegian "Ö" (Ø). It's been a part of their alphabet for centur…

> "When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero, it's a Danish or Norwegian "Ö" (Ø). It's been a part of their alphabet for centuries." You can't please all the people, all of the time. There are ~21 million people living in Scandinavia - and for them, that could indeed be somewhat of an issue. What about the rest of the planet? > "By badly thought out design and a need to be different for no…

> What would you consider to be a better design then?

> > "When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero,

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#177
post #175
post #161

It drives me crazy when fonts look at the old convention of "strike through zero" and for some reason decides they need to be different from the convention and allow the strike to pass the edges of the zero circle. "Anka/Coder" in the linked article is guilty of this. When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero, it's a Danish or Norwegian "Ö" (Ø). It's been a part of their alphabet for centur…

> "When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero, it's a Danish or Norwegian "Ö" (Ø). It's been a part of their alphabet for centuries." You can't please all the people, all of the time. There are ~21 million people living in Scandinavia - and for them, that could indeed be somewhat of an issue. What about the rest of the planet? > "By badly thought out design and a need to be different for no…

The strike should never pass the outer boundary of the 0. I believe that's the solution the Grandparent comment implied.

Alternatively the strike could pass the alternative way through the symbol.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#178
post #31

It looks like these are all monospaced fonts. I realize that most programmers use monospaced fonts, but I personally find proportional fonts to be much more readable and pleasing to my eye. I would be really interested in a similar font comparison that included proportional fonts that are suitable for programming. Right now my favorite is Trebuchet MS. This renders beautifully on the high-DPI displays I use, and it h…

I'm curious to know how you started using proportional fonts for coding. All of the tooling for writing code defaults to monospace, so what started you coding in a different style?

IDEs defaulting to proportional fonts are uncommon but not unheard of. I think BlitzMax or BlitzPlus uses proportional fonts by default.

Coding using proportional fonts is easy to get used to, and it has its proponents. The key is: indent, don't align, and use TABs.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#180
post #175
post #161

It drives me crazy when fonts look at the old convention of "strike through zero" and for some reason decides they need to be different from the convention and allow the strike to pass the edges of the zero circle. "Anka/Coder" in the linked article is guilty of this. When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero, it's a Danish or Norwegian "Ö" (Ø). It's been a part of their alphabet for centur…

> "When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero, it's a Danish or Norwegian "Ö" (Ø). It's been a part of their alphabet for centuries." You can't please all the people, all of the time. There are ~21 million people living in Scandinavia - and for them, that could indeed be somewhat of an issue. What about the rest of the planet? > "By badly thought out design and a need to be different for no…

> what would you consider to be a better design

I don't think there is one. The standard is the standard for a reason, and doesn't need to be better IMHO.

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