[9fans] Favorite variable width fonts?

[James A. Robinson]

Hi folks,

I just recently started using Acme.  Years ago I was a heavy user
of sam and wily, but when I moved from Linux to a Mac OS X machine
I found the X11 based programs were a bit too fiddly on the mac.

Plan9Port changes all that of course, and for years now I've been
wanting to try moving over to acme.  So far I'm really liking it,

but I don't like the default fonts and am trying others.

I'm currently looking at the available variable width fonts under
the Mac, and I'm wondering if you folks have variable width fonts
you particularly like using when programming?

I've been trying out LaoSangamMN and I may switch to Skia-Regular
next.  As weird as it might sound, right now I am also finding
myself partial to ComicSansMS. :-)

Ideally the font would have glyphs that are easy to read for the
symbols used in a typical C or Go program when using a smaller font
(the long label problem I wrote about earlier is manageable with a
smaller font).  It's a bonus if the font has good unicode coverage!

Jim

[James A. Robinson]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 11:42 AM, James A. Robinson <ji...@highwire.stanford.edu> wrote:

Ideally the font would have glyphs that are easy to read for the
symbols used in a typical C or Go program when using a smaller font
(the long label problem I wrote about earlier is manageable with a
smaller font).  It's a bonus if the font has good unicode coverage!

One font I just came across that looks promising is sixpack:

http://www.chastney.com/~philip/sixpack/outline.html

Jim

[Costin Chirvasuta]

I really like /lib/font/bit/vga/vga.font (not sure if it's in official
plan9, found it in 9front last time).

Costin

On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 12:31 AM, Lee Fallat <ircsu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey James,
>
> You are brave to bring up such a subject.
>
> Of the zillion fonts I have tried, only Droid Sans looks the best at smaller
> text sizes. Of course there are bitmap fonts which are readable at 8x8 but I
> figured you'd want something a little more scalable and useable across other
> systems. Lucida Sans Unicode (unicode.7.font) looks really nice in acme too.
>
> Good luck (no really :),
>
> Lee
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 4:39 PM, James A. Robinson

[James A. Robinson]

On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 3:49 AM, Costin Chirvasuta <cos...@gmail.com> wrote:

I really like /lib/font/bit/vga/vga.font (not sure if it's in official
plan9, found it in 9front last time).

Yep, still there:

https://code.google.com/p/plan9front/source/browse/lib/font/bit/?r=78bdd54efdff480240da4dc6a5dd29d468502db7

Thank you for the pointer.

Jim

[James A. Robinson]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 2:31 PM, Lee Fallat <ircsu...@gmail.com> wrote:

... Droid Sans looks the best at smaller text sizes ...

Thanks, I'm checking out the google android fonts using the TTF

fonts available from

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/list/foundry/google-android

Jim