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Top Programming Fonts

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Re: Top Programming Fonts

#151

Post by 20after4 »

dreeves wrote: post #149
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...

since I don't have a stackoverflow account I'll respond to your secondary question... IntelliJ / PhpStorm /etc allow you to enter a custom line spacing. (Plus PhpStorm is a great environment for web project development work)

http://www.jetbrains.com/products.html

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#153

Post by Stormbringer »

adriand wrote: post #96
seabee wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will affect you differently depending on what language you use and whether you like to align things in columns. Think of how some people format C functions, with each parameter on a new line aligned at the open paren. Personally I find that kind of alignment unnecessary and creates too much busywork. Proportional fonts prevent you from even trying. (Unless your editor supports elastic tabstops, but since very fe…

I have tab and column alignment OCD. I can't even read other people's code without getting a terrible itch to realign things. I think a proportional font would either drive me crazy or, on the other hand, might be kind of good for me.

It's the dirty little secret of the "we hate tabs crowd" - they have to keep everybody in monospaced fonts otherwise their conspiracy to force programmers to repeatedly bash their space bars falls apart.

All joking aside, the choice of font should reflect what it is that you are trying to do with the text.

In theory a serifed font is more readable if you are reading the entire text, whereas a sans serif font is supposedly better for skimming through looking for something in particular.

(so on a web page with an article, the article text should be serifed, and the sidebar menu should be sans serif)

An application of this might be that if you are printing out a codebase in order to read it in entirety for the first time, you should use a font with serifs.

whereas if the codebase is relatively familiar to you, but you are printing it out and going bug hunting or reviewing the code, use a sans serif font.

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#154

Post by nsfmc »

ugh wrote: post #117
nsfmc wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few things that i think you're reacting to (i think, because i've had similar feelings, but i could totally be wrong). The first is that Verdana is really nicely hinted, which means that, unlike most other fonts out there, Verdana has the advantage of always technically looking sharp. The second is that Verdana is mostly monolinear, like Courier or Andale or any of traditional monospaces, there's only the s…

I don't know. Verdana and style? Verdana? Letter Gothic, for example, has tons more style than most other fonts, proportional or not. Verdana, in that context, is to me just as to quite a bit more boring than nearly all the fonts mentioned in the article. (Courier excluded.)

Courier has tons style (i [heart] ny!) and see also [Courier Sans](http://lineto.com/The+Fonts/Font+Categories/Text+Fonts/Couri...), and so does verdana.

I know, i know, it's verdana, the scourge of late 90s web design but it still has style (doesn't everything?), it's just that verdana has come to encompass 'corporate' and 'default' and 'websafe' in much the same way that the verizon logo encompasses 'design by committee.' Verdana's got some serious baggage, but i would hardly say it's soulless.

And in any case, it's pointless to argue this issue, but, i dunno, ten or twenty years from now, maybe we'll look back and feel differently about Verdana (in much the same way that people are warming up to Optima (the inspiration for letter gothic) again after what appears to have been a 20 year hiatus).

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#155

Post by leif »

telemachos wrote: post #2

I love Inconsolata, but there's just one thing about it: the curly quotation marks. If you have that same quibble, good news: Inconsolata-dz[1]. Inconsolata with straight quotes. [1] http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-dou...

it's also got pretty poor unicode support, which bugs me just a little

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#156

Post by FiReaNG3L »

joshuacc wrote: post #24

Inconsolata looks like it is nice for Mac users, but on Windows 7 with Cleartype enabled (the default) it is the blurriest font I've ever seen, regardless of what size I used. Consolas, on the other hand, is exceedingly crisp.

Thanks for confirming this, I installed some of those and oh my they were ugly. I'll stick with Verdana for now :(

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#158

Post by wladimir »

technomancy wrote: post #91
gnuvince wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terminus is awesome, it's a shame so many "top programming fonts" forget it.

I switched over to antialiased fonts a while ago, but every so often I feel the urge to go retro and switch back to Terminus for a few weeks.

You could use the TTF version of Terminus with anti-aliasing.

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#159

Post by X-Istence »

Karn wrote: post #22
kristiandupont wrote: post #11

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

Would you be willing to share your colorscheme?

Re: Top Programming Fonts

#160

Post by Karn »

X-Istence wrote: post #159
Karn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Would you be willing to share your colorscheme?

I'd be happy to, what editor do you use?
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