Beautiful Programming Fonts
Archives Forums/General Discussion/Beautiful Programming Fonts
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| In my years of programming I have become aware of the readability of the font I choose to read when programming. It took me a while to really "see" the font I was looking at. For some, this might be cause for a grin - because you already know how great it is to have a really _nice_ font to stare at. For the rest, I have only this advice: get a programmer's font, and setup your syntax highlighting to be bright text on a dark background. No matter what IDE you use, you'll find yourself in a better disposition if your font is truly beautiful to look at. If you're using Windows like me, you've probably come across some of the older, standard fixed-width fonts; such as "Fixedsys" or "Courier New" (ugh!). If you are still using one of the typefaces from these font families, do yourself a huge favor, and find a new one. I suggest one of the following two fonts, both of which are freely and legally available for download: 1. Consolas - this is one of the six new ClearType fonts included with Windows Vista. However, if you use Windows XP (like me) you can legally download and use this font, simply by downloading and installing Microsoft's PowerPoint viewer. It comes as part of the package. 2. Console/Console 437 - this font family is Raster only (and thus will not work in every program, but most programmer-oriented editors are fine with it), produced by "r_harvey" and available on his personal website. |
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| I use Courier New with Cleartype enabled. No reason to change to something else, imho. |
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| GfK No reason to change to something else, ... Except for pure aesthetics and your own eyesight. You really ought to at least _try_ Consolas. The difference is astounding. |
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| I am a die-hard Fixedsys user and nothing has been good enough to replace that for me...but I am downloading Consolas and will give it a try for a couple hours. Thanks for the tip! |
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| I use WingDings in italics mode, fonstsize of 4! (Just kidding...) Actually, it's hard to believe I used to program on the Commodore 64 in 40 column fixed font - white on a blue screen - in Simon's Basic (remember that one?)... Who could ever use all of those 38911 Basic bytes available? ;) Russell |
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| Nothing beats ProggyClean with extra fat separator chars ([<, etc. But thats only my opionion =) |
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| Vera Sans Mono: http://praegnanz.de/essays/vera-sans-mono (german text) http://praegnanz.de/file_download/74 preview pdf cu olli |
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| you can also get the font from here The installer requires that visual studio 2005 be installed, but you can also get the MSI that the installer extracts from c:\documents and settings\your name\local settings\temp\_is38. You can then extract the contents of it using this tool: http://blogs.pingpoet.com/overflow/archive/2005/06/02/2449.aspx |
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| Comic Sans, above 12 points |
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| H&K Comic Sans, above 12 points Surely, you jest. Please, god. |
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| Can't believe that I haven't seen Jokerman mentioned yet ;) |
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| Comic Sans as well or Verdana. |
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| Mostly Courier new, font size 10 with cleartype enabled. |
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| how do you enable cleartype? |
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| On Windows XP: Display Properties / Appearance / Effects / Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts / ClearType |
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| yes that does make a difference. many thanks |
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| Consolas is great! |
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| Yep. I think Consolas will officially replace FixedSys for me. Thanks again for the tip. |
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| Blitz3d font |
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| I've installed that consolas thing and had a look. Does look alright. Its not massively different to courier new anyway, but I'll probably stay using it now its installed. |
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| You guys should try Andale Mono. It comes standard on Macs but it's available on the web for free download for PCs. I never use anything else now. |
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| Just found this: http://www.proggyfonts.com/ |
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| Bitstream Vera Sans Mono: http://www.bitstream.com/font_rendering/products/dev_fonts/vera.html It's a developer font as well, with nice & clear special characters such as the !@#$%^&*() as well as a very visibly different O and 0. |
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| xlsior: My hat off to you, sir. I was about to suggest the exact same. Also used for the reading and composing of emails. An excellent font :) |
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| Fixedsys FTW. |
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| Consolas is downloadable here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/thankyou.aspx?familyId=22e69ae4-7e40-4807-8a86-b3d36fab68d3&displayLang=en Straight from MS, so I guess it is legal. :) |
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| I tried Consolas and it doesn't look good. It's rendering very strange and distorted in Windows 2000. |
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| Probably because Win2K doesn't have Cleartype like XP and Vista. |
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| You know, you can code brainjam in wingdings no problem... [mod edited] |
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| Heyyy! You can use Consolas in Blide by modifying the colour scheme file in wordpad :-D [edit] ACtually, after a system restart Consolas showed up in its options :) |
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| altitudems: I love you for that link. |
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| Nothing beats ProggyClean with extra fat separator chars ([<, etc. But thats only my opionion =) I'm almost in total agreement, although I use ProggySquare with extra fat separators! :) |
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| well I might have to try one if these out to save my waning eyesight. |
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| xlsior/vinylpusher: uh, I can't figure out how to download it. Any tips. thanks! |
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| You know, you can code brainjam in wingdings no problem... You should edit that before a moderator sees it (then go read the terms of use so you don't do it again).[mod edited] |
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| Using Consolas now at 11 point, 10 was too small as 12 too big (has bit line spaces for some reason). Anyway I like it :-) thanks. |
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| It is just me then ?.. I installed Consolas and it looks rubbish... characters like M W w m y all look blured/faded. Its only slight but it just looks annoying.. like looking at the output of an old typerwriter where some letters dont strike hard enough. Admitidly I like to use a smaller font.. but even up at 11pt its noticable. |
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| Nah, I thought it was cack too. Straight back to Fixedsys for me. |
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| ... and me (even with Cleartype). |
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| Oh I didn't really notice that before, but I can live with it. |
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| Nice, I like Consolas (it seems to fit more text on the screen, at the same time being just as readible). Courier New is fine, but it's nice to change just for variety now and then. |
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| Thought I'd give it a try too, not committed to it yet but will give it some time :). |
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| Consolas is downloadable here: www.microsoft.com/downloads/thankyou.aspx?familyId=22e69ae4-7e40-4807-8a86-b3d36fab68d3&displayLang=en Straight from MS, so I guess it is legal. :) The download is broken for me. Everything on microsoft.com will not download for me, and it has been like this for over a month. It says "page cannot be displayed". Any other place to download? |
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| The download is broken for me. Maybe you have scripts disabled in your browser? I do and often think pages are broken until I (temporarily) re-enable them. |
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| You need Visual Studio for it. What a drag. Edit: @Xlsior - the website has no download link. |
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| Yeah, I have Visual Studio, so I didn't realize that was a requirement, sorry. |
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| I just use Lucida Console for monospace text editing. It serves me fine, and it's a standard font in XP. |
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| No matter what font I choose, there's always something I don't like about it. My favorite by far was the Blitz3D font, but apparently I can't use that with IDEal, so now I'm stuck with things I don't like. |
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| I use lucida console (8) most of the time, but I'll give consolas and bitstream vera sans a shot. |
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| You need Visual Studio for it. What a drag. http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=69589#778732 |
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| its gotta be fixed width, nothing worse than staggered values. i used to like textmode (basic dos), it was fixed width and easy to read. For some reason the system font looks chunky in windows :x |
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| Blitz3D font, but apparently I can't use that with IDEal A reason not to use Ideal then?I mean that in all seriousness, the only problem I have with BLide is that since the change betwwen 8.7 and 8.8 Tab sizes are now not constant, under my fav font |
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| I using Arial (with adjacent spaces for operators, spaces after commas, tabs, etc..) because it's compact and allow more text to fit into the code window. |
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| Just found this: www.proggyfonts.com/ Anyone who hasn't checked out these fonts is doing themselves a disservice. |
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| My favorite by far was the Blitz3D font, but apparently I can't use that with IDEal, so now I'm stuck with things I don't like. Oh? I'm using it right now - it's one of my favourites too (if only because it harks back to a happier more innocent time... or something). What stops you? |
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| I tried Proggyclean but it looks really blocky, I want something smooth. The perfect font would be Comic Sans but with each letter the same width, and have operators be extra wide so that you don't have to put in whitespaces to make it look clear. Is there anything like that? |
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| Well err isnt that consolas? |
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| The download is broken for me. Maybe you have scripts disabled in your browser? I do and often think pages are broken until I (temporarily) re-enable them. If I have scripts disabled then its really hard to figure out how to enable them. Anyways I tried the download on 2 computers with different versions of IE and XP and tried using restore defaults and tried setting the security to lowest, etc. All downloads from mircosoft always instantly say page cannot be displayed. And I have a legal XP. |
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| You can use the Blitz3D font with IDEal? Maybe I just have an old version. When you select the font, what's it called? |
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| All downloads from mircosoft always instantly say page cannot be displayed Stupid question, but have you tried out of US Buisness hours? |
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| Buggy: In the section of IDEal where you select the font, it's just called 'Blitz' and (unconfirmed) it seems to default to a 9.75 point size. The actual file in your Fonts folder is called 'Blitz.fon'. |
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| Here's a good site http://www.lowing.org/fonts/ |
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I am on a Mac here and use a font named Optima at size Regular 15. It looks like this: It's one of the clearest and most comfortable fonts I've found to use for BlitzMax. Setting up your colors to be easy on the eye and complementary is helpful too. |
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