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When using a terminal emulator or editor oriented for programming (whatever the platform, operating system or language), which is your favorite font ?
most of us have our favorite editor for programming. but what about the font ?
i usually use my laptop directly on console, using vi. i load on boot a 8x8 font (ibm so called console font - but the ibm font i recall from mainframes had a dot and not a slash on the zero) so i use a 80x50 console.
but sometimes we have to use a terminal emulator when the machine is away, or to have some specialized tools when the editor is programming oriented (colorization, code folding and so on).
a good programming font. what is it ? we all know we need a slashed or dotted zero but.. what about the "l" (L) letter and number 1 and so on ?
by searching with google, i found a page that lists good programming fonts by "order" of preference for programmers (or so the page says...).
when you are using a terminal emulator, and programming, what is the font you prefer to use ?
here is the link i found :
http://www.lowing.org/fonts/
My favourite is Andale Mono. It's one of the few sans serif monospace fonts around, and it looks clean at insanely small point sizes, which I happen to like. At very small font sizes, I have confused myself between 1 and l, unfortunately. (There are serifs on 1, l and I to distinguish them, but for some reason they don't look out of place.)
default8x9 in console mode, 80x60 :)fixed-width. absolutely essential. everything else is optional. fixed-width is essential to lining up your well-spaced, well-commented code, where that STUPID K&R style isn't obeyed, but where c-code braces match up exactly underneath each other.
good visual clues and good-looking "elegant"-looking code make it so much easier on your eyes, to find stuff.
mind you, on a screen with 200 words on it in alphabetical order, in three columns, i find it takes me a split second to locate the required word, when it takes other people several seconds to find it...
what else.
a font with good visibility at 6ft on a 1280x1024 resolution, 17in monitor is a bonus - for those people who have split keyboards that mount on armrests (one half on each armrest) cos you can put your feet up on the desk and still rattle out code at 150wpm :)
yehh :)
what commands you folks can issue on what sort of bare system that can satisfy who else's font-fanatics? I always thought it's unreasonable on my part to ask my partner to get his computer 'fixed' so it can display fonts in a natural language which is entirely foreign to him.
colour is _so_ important. the day i discovered that vim had s syntax highlighting was a good day indeed.maan, how can you _live_ without syntax colour highlighting.
the speed at which you locate keywords strings and basic programming errors is _so_ much quicker i just.... i look at people's screens when they don't have colour .... python keywords in yellow, strings in purple... ands i just go... _why_ are you inflicting this much paain on yourself?
are you a masochist or something? :)
so.
priority one: colour.
priority two: fixed width font. priority 3: 80 char limit full or half screen, depending on whether i'm doing console or xterm editing.
priority 4: as many lines on a screen as possible (minimum of 50) and still legible at a distance of 1 to 2 metres.
priority 5: "thick" fonts - there are some very fine fontts that are a complete pain to read. which is wh i hate word so much because it throws these looovellyyy fonts at you.
Quite a few years ago now I made my own bitmap font for use in writing code. My preference is for a tallish font with a reasonable amount of space between lines, and I have a particular thing about the underscore, which I think (in code) wants to rest on the baseline instead of hanging below it.These days I could probably use Bitstream Vera Sans Mono (the best straightforward scalable console font) or Andale Mono (well made but a bit too distinctive) nearly as happily, but I stick with my own, 'cos it's mine. I've written hundreds of thousands of lines of code in this font and I still prefer it, so that's not bad.
I only made one size. Fortunately today's LCDs seem to have much the same dpi as the CRTs I was using then. Here's a pic using the same sample text as on the previously linked page:
http://www.all-day-breakfast.com/m/codec-terminal-text.png
Download (X11 BDF format). As that page describes, I started out with a version that centred the full-stop (".") character in the x-height of the font, thinking it might be better for code that way. I now find that irritating and no longer use that variant.
Chris
I tend to be partial to this one because I know the guy who made it. It's a bitmap font though. It's designed to look good at very small sizes, but doesn't have any european characters and no bold.
I will have a similar search as you when I get my wish of a 2880x2160 (or bigger) display and start using anti-aliased fonts for programming. My current stopgap is the Nimbus Sans Mono font that comes with Fedore Core hand edited to have a slashed 0.
As it turns out, I've been designing a monospace font, Inconsolata, that meets at least some of these goals. The fonts is designed for print and high-resolution displays, but (perhaps with a bit of tweaking) it might be good for programming use as well.The OTF version is probably a little tight for on-screen use, and the hinting (CFF outlines) may interact badly with Linux rendering, but I have it as my default monospace font on OSX, and it looks quite fine there. Note that the .sfd has 20 units looser spacing - I use a FontForge script to go from there to the OTF.
I also used width to distinguish O and 0, but for screen use it would probably be better to use an internal dot or slash. If there's enough interest, I'll release a screen version as well as the print version.
raph: I think there's a lot of folks that would be interested in a screen release. The font situation is not particularly good right now -- I don't know many people that aren't halfheartedly looking for another face to use.In short, "yes please" :-)
I recently discovered the "neep" font. It comes in a variety of sizes and it's great for programming work, without being *too* funny looking. (For me, the variety of available sizes is actually very important. I work on at least three different sizes of screen, depending on my location, and I really want to have two 80-column windows side by size without overlap or wasted space.) It also seems to do unicode, which is a nice bonus when reading my email in a terminal.Forget about scalable fonts: I don't trust a software renderer to put all its effort in the right places, because renderers are designed to look pretty, not reliable. Maybe MacOS X has a really excellent font renderer that never has this sort of problem (it wouldn't surprise me much) but Linux and Windows sure don't.
Did you make a release raph ? :)I would love your font with a dot inside the zero.
I am willing to pay you for the time spent to do that. Got any Paypal around ?
Anything I can use from X and console would be great !
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