What Makes a Good Programming Font?

#1

Post by theoneill » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 5:14 PM UTC

What Makes a Good Programming Font?
andersnoras.com

Re: What Makes a Good Programming Font?

#2

Post by tdavis » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 6:03 PM UTC

I'm a big fan of Pragmata. It's the only programming font I've tried that hasn't had nagging annoyances.

Re: What Makes a Good Programming Font?

#3

Post by ashleyw » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 6:37 PM UTC

I'm not a big fonts person, but when I found Bitsteam Vera Sans Mono I knew I loved it:

http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/1897/picture68gr5.png

It just looks fantastic to me — I simply don't get the attraction to fonts which look like they came directly from a 1970's typewriter! :)

(good anti-aliasing on OSX helps too...)

Re: What Makes a Good Programming Font?

#4

Post by nailer » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 6:56 PM UTC

Linux: Liberation Mono (already in your distro as 'liberation-fonts'). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts

Windows: Consolas (install the Word 2007 viewer and you get it for free).

Re: What Makes a Good Programming Font?

#5

Post by kristiandupont » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 6:59 PM UTC

I have been using verdana for two years now and I love it.I also use black on grey background, so my editor looks much like these comments.

Re: What Makes a Good Programming Font?

#6

Post by nailer » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 7:07 PM UTC

tdavis wrote: post #2

I'm a big fan of Pragmata. It's the only programming font I've tried that hasn't had nagging annoyances.

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/fsd/pragmata/. Ooh, a bit Star-Treky.

Re: What Makes a Good Programming Font?

#7

Post by ComputerGuru » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 7:11 PM UTC

kristiandupont wrote: post #5

I have been using verdana for two years now and I love it.I also use black on grey background, so my editor looks much like these comments.

Wait. You code in a sans-serif non-fixed-width font!?

Re: What Makes a Good Programming Font?

#8

Post by johnm » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 7:56 PM UTC

Clean sans serif, monospaced.

Consistent baseline.

Distinguished forms (i.e., 0/O, S/$, (/{, 1/l, etc.).

Good weighting at various sizes.

Re: What Makes a Good Programming Font?

#9

Post by smoody » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 8:32 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #4

Linux: Liberation Mono (already in your distro as 'liberation-fonts'). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts Windows: Consolas (install the Word 2007 viewer and you get it for free).

I second that. Liberation Mono rocks. And it is updated somewhat frequently, so it might be worth checking for a newer version or to install on a Mac. (they put a dot in the middle of zeros a while back, for instance)

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

Re: What Makes a Good Programming Font?

#10

Post by dimitar » Mon, Dec 22, 2008, 9:05 PM UTC

terminus by Dimitar Zhekov (we aren't related).

"Terminus Font is designed for long (8 and more hours per day) work with computers." http://www.is-vn.bg/hamster/