[OT?] Fonts for the older programmer

Richard Owlett

unread,

Jun 19, 2011, 4:02:00 PM6/19/11

to

I have problems with ) vs } and occasionally ]
My system is WinXP Pro and I prefer mono spaced Sans Serif

Comments/suggestions. TIA

Kevin Kenny

unread,

Jun 19, 2011, 6:55:54 PM6/19/11

to

In my experience of squinting at displays through bifocals, my current
preference for a programming font is Monotype's Andal� Mono.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andal%C3%A9_Mono

http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/

or if you want just this one font

http://sourceforge.net/projects/corefonts/files/the%20fonts/final/andale32.exe

It does a reasonable job of distinguishing () from {} from [].

It also does a good job of distinguishing Eye (I) from one (1) from ell
(l) from pipe (|), and Oh (O) from zero (0).
--
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin

Neil

unread,

Jun 20, 2011, 8:28:13 AM6/20/11

to

It's a question that comes up fairly regularly. Popular are the
Bitstream fonts, and DejaVu, although Consolas and Lucida Console seem
to be more regularly used, in survey.

Take a look at the samples, here:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/work/FontSurvey.aspx
There won't be many true san-serif fonts, due to the LIli1 issue, but
there are a couple of mostly-sans.

Personally, I like Liberation--but I haven't changed them up in a
couple of years.

Jeff Godfrey

unread,

Jun 20, 2011, 1:25:20 PM6/20/11

to

For Windows-based dev, I've used Consolas for a number of years and have
been quite happy with it. I'm not sure it's available on an XP system by
default, but I'm confident you can download it.

That said, the link posted by Neil is very informative and his preferred
Liberation font looks quite nice - I may have to check it out in a dev
environment.

Jeff

Jeff Godfrey

unread,

Jun 20, 2011, 1:38:24 PM6/20/11

to

Just a follow-up. Comparing two copies of my dev environment - one
using Consolas and one using Liberation, I definitely still prefer
Consolas. I guess that could be simply because I'm used to it, but I was
surprised at how *much* better I liked it than Liberation (though I
quite liked Liberation on the site posted by Neil).

So, I guess the moral of the story is select a few and try them in your
dev environment of choice. It seems that's the only place to get a true
feel for the change.

Jeff

Neil

unread,

Jun 21, 2011, 9:51:45 AM6/21/11

to

On Jun 20, 1:38 pm, Jeff Godfrey <jeff_godf...@pobox.com> wrote:
> So, I guess the moral of the story is select a few and try them in your
> dev environment of choice. It seems that's the only place to get a true
> feel for the change.

Yes, and besides individual taste, how they show up on individual
monitors (laptop, CRT, plasma, phone, anti-aliased, sub-pixeled, ...)
varies widely, as well. That being said, a fair number of the better-
looking ones are free downloads; so you can just install the
contenders and suit your own circumstances.

If you have Visual Studio, you can download Consolas for it:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=22e69ae4-7e40-4807-8a86-b3d36fab68d3&displaylang=en

Richard Owlett

unread,

Jun 22, 2011, 9:11:33 AM6/22/11

to

Thanks to all.
I now have a better idea of *HOW* I should select a font.
I'll systematically go through the fonts already on my system.
It seems Microsoft has done a fine job of making it annoying for
users to add JUST a font to their system. One more reason to bite
bullet and go *nix.

Jeff Godfrey

unread,

Jun 22, 2011, 7:58:17 PM6/22/11

to

On 6/22/2011 8:11 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> It seems Microsoft has done a fine job of making it annoying for users
> to add JUST a font to their system.

How so? I think you're using XP, right? In that case, you should be
able to add a font by either A) Control Panel | Fonts, then File |
Install New Font or B) simply drag the font file itself into your
Windows/Fonts folder.

Newer versions of Windows may vary slightly from the above but should be
quite similar.

Seems simple enough.

Jeff

Richard Owlett

unread,

Jun 22, 2011, 9:22:29 PM6/22/11

to

It wasn't the method of installation that bothered me

/begin *RANT*
- it was their licensing hoops to jump thru. One interesting font
was available for "free" side effect of a read-only viewer of a
proprietary MS format in which I had no interest. Another was
available to those who had continuously paid for meaningless
upgrades to a program of marginal usefulness. I know I've paid
for MS-DOS 5.0 (and 4.x?), Win 3.0, Win95, Win98, WinXP Pro (at
least twice) while only having one operable machine at a time
{recently bought laptops with their own copies of Windoze which
were bought with the explicit purpose of having Linux available.
/end *RANT* ;/ LOL

I'll have to give the PATERNALISTIC Mr. Gates credit for 1 (ONE)
thing - painless font INSTALLATION.

Neil had recommended looking at
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/work/FontSurvey.aspx

I found 2 fonts which seemed interesting. I downloaded and
uncompressed them. I copied them to my font directory and was
greeted by a pane noting progress of their _installation_ .

I'm experimenting with Liberation Mono.
osaka_unicode seems worthy of notice also.

BTW - do I sound OPINIONATED ;/

Arnold Snarb

unread,

Jun 23, 2011, 8:23:31 PM6/23/11

to

Richard Owlett noted:

> It seems Microsoft has done a fine job of making it annoying for
> users to add JUST a font to their system.

and concluded:

> One more reason to bite the bullet and go *nix.

Oh, dear.

I suspect you're in for an unpleasant surprise...

--Arnold

(To be fair, installing fonts on modern Unixes is considerably
easier than it used to be. Nowadays it's somewhat *less* painful
than a railroad spike through the forehead; that wasn't always
the case.)