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Top Programming Fonts

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Re: Top Programming Fonts

#141

Post by archangel_one »

wging wrote: post #95
wladimir wrote: post #4

He forgot my favorite programming font, Terminus. It's pretty popular in Linux development. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminus_%28typeface%29

Looking at the fonts he did select, it's clear why Terminus gets no mention: it's significantly different aesthetically, with squarer edges and more straight lines, etc., from his preferred fonts.

But his number 10 is Courier, which he basically says he doesn't like; surely it ranks higher than that. I'd say it's not entirely dissimilar to Proggy as well.

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#142

Post by yread »

HannoverFiste wrote: post #57
Symmetry wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking - most of the monospace fonts I see are totally fine and I really don't care about the differences between the 10 he mentioned as being good. But when I go to windows and run cmd.exe I'm blown away by just how ugly the font they use there is.

I'm blown away that you can change the font for cmd.exe, but you only get one other option: Lucida Console. Still, it beats "Raster Fonts".

Or you can use http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ and you get other nice features as well

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#143

Post by keeperofdakeys »

windsurfer wrote: post #109
kwantam wrote: post #68

Several others here have suggested my favorite font already, the standard 6x13 "Fixed" bitmap font. Pretty much every Linux machine has a version of this, but most modern Debians (and probably others) that ship with fontconfig have bitmapped fonts turned off by default for programs that use fontconfig for their font info (i.e., not xterm, but gnome-terminal, usually gvim, et cetera). If you want to use Fixed and othe…

What if you have a high DPI monitor? Isn't that too hard to see?

There are larger variants of this font.

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#144

Post by to3m »

praptak wrote: post #123

Every second spent on "programming font" choice is a second wasted. Every single second. Twiddling fonts is to programming what applying flame decals is to car racing. If the font doesn't become transparent to you after uhm, about 5 seconds of focusing at the code then you should permanently switch to iPads as you have no business doing any real computing.

You reckon?

I started out using FixedSys, since it was the default on the editor I was using at the time - PFE, I think. And since taking the time to switch to the X 6x13 font (which I happened to encounter towards the end of my time at university), I must have saved enough time scrolling horizontally through other people's code to break even.

I have dicked about a bit trying out other programming fonts, it's true, but having had success the once from doing this, why not double check?

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#146

Post by steve___ »

wladimir wrote: post #4

He forgot my favorite programming font, Terminus. It's pretty popular in Linux development. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminus_%28typeface%29

I used Terminus for many years. About 18 months ago I switched to gohufont -- http://font.gohu.eu/

A person can't fit quite as much on the screen but I find the extra spacing makes it much easier to read (eg emails).

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#147

Post by nikcub »

consolas is an excellent font for both terminal and editing. if you would like to install it for OS X or UNIX, I have extracted the TTF as well as the OS X installer package and placed them into a repo here:

https://bitbucket.org/nik/consolas/

(the Microsoft license allows this if you have a license for Office, Windows Vista+ or Visual Studio)

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#148

Post by proexploit »

barrkel wrote: post #31

I'm still using 7pt Dina, a monospace bitmap font, in all console windows and my IDEs - all except Visual Studio 2010, that is, which doesn't properly support bitmap fonts (leading me to avoid using it whenever possible).

I too use Dina (based of Proggy). I tried a lot of different fonts and there's a few on this top 10 list that wouldn't work for me but since I found Dina, I haven't searched for another font or made another change.

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#149

Post by dreeves »

kwantam wrote: post #68

Several others here have suggested my favorite font already, the standard 6x13 "Fixed" bitmap font. Pretty much every Linux machine has a version of this, but most modern Debians (and probably others) that ship with fontconfig have bitmapped fonts turned off by default for programs that use fontconfig for their font info (i.e., not xterm, but gnome-terminal, usually gvim, et cetera). If you want to use Fixed and othe…

Has anyone figured out the equivalent of this on OSX? I asked about this a while back on StackOverflow:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3275956/is-there-a-versio...

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#150

Post by dreeves »

getonit wrote: post #25

I don't wish to troll, but I see this a lot and I can't for the life of me figure out how anyone needs to give this any more thought than 'monospace, next question?', despite many explanations each time. Can someone shed some light on any advantages they feel are of a reasonably significant importance, and why? I mean, I can see plenty of advantages, but they're all so negligible they're not worth even the time it ta…

I have a different answer than all the other replies: for me it's just about fitting as much of my code on the screen as possible. The standard xterm font is nice and compact. For every other font I've tried, if you adjust it so that it matches or beats the xterm font in terms of number of lines of code that fit on your screen and number of editor windows you can fit side by side, they are not readable. Like pretty much literally not readable. (I'm eager to be corrected if I'm wrong -- I may not have tried every font out there, but I've tried a lot of them.)

Therefore the xterm font (FixedMedium6x13) wins. But getting exactly that font in other editors like it is in xterms is not so simple:

For linux, see this comment in the current discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2584147

For osx, see my question, also in that thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2586300

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