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Top Programming Fonts

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Re: Top Programming Fonts

#101

I say this every time this discussion comes up but I do feel it bears repeating: I switched away from monospaced a while ago and I am never going back. I encourage you to try something like Verdana for a week just to see how it feels.

I bought The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup which had program code written in a proportional font. It is absolutely a nightmare to read. When using a proportional font, I have "jitter" issues as the cursor scrolls down and keeps switching places on the screen. I have to navigate vertically then make the horizontal adjustments.

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#103
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…

Super fair question. Frankly, it's unlikely to ever be a big deal. Font design and choice is always a game of small details and your desire to spend time and effort on it depends on how much you care about small details.

For an art director doing print or web design, each and every single detail is vital. They are attempting to ship something as close to perfection as possible. From this grows a fantastic font market where artistic craftsmen have learned to honestly, subtly insert comfort, exoticism, 70s appeal, honesty, clarity, or any of many other subjective emotions into just a few pixels difference in the shape of letters we see all day every day.

But yeah, honestly, when coding, that stuff isn't going to kill you.

At the same time, there's a huge market of experts who have often released free monospaced fonts using the accumulated knowledge of the craft described above. It's easy to find fonts which solve the obvious problems (li1, oO0, mn) and possible to find ones that solve less obvious problems (textual color which can reduce reading stress, condensed fonts which can pack more into a line without feeling cluttered, larger x-height which can appear more inviting).

'Monospace, next question?' is really 60% of what these fonts can give you. 'Modern monospace, next question?' is probably 95%. The last 5 is just there if you care about it. Like usual, the last 5% is 500x the effort of 'Modern monospace, next question', though.

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#104

It's got to be 6x13, every single time. There really is no other choice. http://mirtchovski.com/p9/fonts/6x13.png

Glad I'm not the only one who actually likes blocky bitmap monospace fonts for programming.

I wish I could say why though. It just feels nice and computer-y. Maybe the pixels remind me of bits.

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#105
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indentation. Monospaced fonts allow much easier scanning of indentation levels. For Python this is crucial; for brace-delimited languages it's merely important for many of us.

I don't follow you -- `easier scanning of indentation levels'? With proportional font, the left-hand whitespace used for indentation of your code looks exactly as with monospaced font. Only the text itself changes somewhat. The width of tab/positions of tabstops has nothing to do with font itself; it's property (often settable) of the editor (or in rare case of the underlying terminal). May be expressed as `times the…

This is probably the best advice. If you're doing all your own code, then non-fixed may work.

If you're on projects with other devs where there is an in-grained fixed-width coding practice, it may be very hard to suddenly go non-fixed.

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#106
post #22

I say this every time this discussion comes up but I do feel it bears repeating: I switched away from monospaced a while ago and I am never going back. I encourage you to try something like Verdana for a week just to see how it feels.

I've been using Verdana for coding for years, with some modifications. I've changed the parentheses, braces, operators etc. to be more prominent - that makes it just perfect for me. Edit: screenshot here: http://i.imgur.com/xv5oz.png

[deleted]

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#107
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…

Completely agree, that's the font I love.

I tried Inconsolata briefly in my xterm window but ... I don't know, I didn't like it. I guess it's a subjective thing, but I dislike anti-aliased font, I prefer the crisp look of my fixed bitmap font. :-)

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#108
I mostly like inconsolata, but it doesn't keep my favorite part of deja-vu: the lowercase ell. I never ever confuse the ell with the one as it is so distinct. Inconsolata does this by removing the baseline on the one, which works, but I much prefer the deja-vu way of things.

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#109
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?
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