What Font Do You Use For Coding? 37
Roger Ramjet asks: "As an old schooler, I was somewhat hooked on VT100 terminals and coding with VI; however I never seem to be happy with fonts in DevStudio (amongst others). My question is, what fonts do you prefer to program with, and why?" As another "old schooler", I must say I do prefer monospaced fonts in a nice sans-serif for coding.
Fixed, off-white on near-black (Score:1)
(Accept no substitute!) I have to create a font alias for it to be available for KDE apps. Under Windows there is really only one alternative: Lucida Console. I hate Courier.
My color scheme is light gray (#C0C0C0) on a dark color (#100820). White-on-black is just as bad for the eyes as pure black-on-pure white.
Re:lucida typewriter! (Score:1)
I find that in white on black; it's readable down to 10 pixel size on a 1840x1380 21" monitor. 12 pixels is comfortable and makes for 260x104 characters on screen. Yummy...
Re:Dark grey background, offwhite text (Score:1)
Around the same time, I re-wrote my emacs color scheme with a dark grey background and off-white/gray/brownish/mostly neutral text colors. It might sound a little disgusting at first, but I have found it to be a really good scheme for coding in both light and dark rooms. You can copy it from here [rabidpenguin.org] if you want to take a look. The only "bad" thing that people might complain about is that my highlight region is black with a yellow background (I don't highlight often, but it clearly shows where things are highlighted).
Re:8x8 System Font (Score:1)
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Re:lucida typewriter! (Score:1)
Can't say where I got it, unfortunately. (It could been from a momentary installation of Lotus WordPro a couple years ago.) However, it looks verrry similar to the Lucida Console font which is part of the standard Windows install, and is hinted.
To answer the Ask Slashdot: MS's Anadale Mono is the only way to go for monospaced text. It even has a dotted 0 (zero), and a clear distinction between l and 1.
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Don't hate me but... (Score:1)
Fixed (Score:1)
Re:xterms (Score:1)
- Milo Hyson
lucida typewriter! (Score:1)
The only font I'll use now in my Eterms (and in gvim) is lucida typewriter, specificially:
-*-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-*-*-*-120-75-75-*-*-* -*
or (for smaller resolutions/screens):
-*-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-*-*-*-100-75-75-*-*-* -*
Since I realised it was possible, I also use it as my monospaced font in my browser: makes reading code much easier.
It's a nice, simple, sans-serif monospaced font, with all the useful symbols. Comes with X11R6: is there a TrueType version? I'd love to use it in Windows at university.
My own ! (Score:1)
I still need to convert the bitmap graphics over to a True Type font. Anyone have any tools to recommend?
color, again... (Score:1)
...now that I ponder it, a low-frequency color like blue for the background is easy on your eyes; the white characters contrast really well for visibility.
The only problem with this is that it falls apart with syntax highlighting-- the reason I use grey-on-black in all my XTerms... but every so often I switch back to -syntax +blue.
I also like green-on-black...
Letter Gothic-EGG (Score:1)
a download... (Score:1)
Black on White with yellow tint (Score:1)
It looks nice and doesnt hurt my eyes at 1024x768.
Andale Mono with Windows. (Score:1)
At the same time I have PuTTY sessions to a number of Solaris boxen. In each session I use Andale mono with font-smoothing enabled. Andale Mono, even at low point sizes, works flawlessly with the most confusing characters, and is easier on the eye than the various Courier and Lucida Sans options.
Courier (Score:1)
Proportional Fonts Rock!!! (Score:1)
Sure, they take a little getting used to, but they make variable recognition heaps faster, and with good syntax styling+cut/paste, the whole typo issue just vanishes... Here's my editor here:
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcade/1783/
(Looks best at 1600x1200)
-ShunScene
Re:Black background web pages (Score:1)
Re:Black background web pages (Score:1)
It's not that I don't believe you, rather that I would like to read/find out more information about it.
I remember an article that I read a few years ago that disscussed the advantages/disadvantages of serif Vs. san-serif fonts and it was very interesting. I would like to read more about this.
Re:BBEdit, Monaco 9 (Score:1)
You probably already know about this one, but this is just in case you don't. I used to love using BBEdit on my mac as well. When I switched to Linux i found the keystroke combinations in Xemacs to be better than BBEdit's, although the GUI menus are not situated as nicely. Xemacs has a nice demo that you can run that teaches you many of the keystroke combinations.
Fixed pitch font resources (Score:1)
One choice in a lame world (Score:1)
Being stuck a lot with minimal Windoze tools (multiple interpretations possible), I tend to use 10 point Courier New TrueType. It's mono, clean, the characters are well-formed, and I can fit a fair amount on a moderate screen. I also like it for printouts.
For Windoze black/color on a white background, it's the best I've found.
Of course, my "environment" merits the modding down of this comment to -something_big.
Re earlier comments, all that white background tires me out, too. Even if you don't consciously perceive the screen refreshes, they strain your vision and so the brain that's processing the vision.
I seem to recall reading that studies show TV, regardless of content, heightens agitation, aggression, etc. Possible link with the flicker -- worse with TV due to interlacing and lower refresh rates.
I would think the effect, if real, is present with CRTs as well. Light text on a dark/black would seem a good choice to lessen the extremity of the flicker's visibility and so its effect.
Dark grey background, offwhite text (Score:1)
-Kasreyn
xterms (Score:1)
So how do I get my xterms to have a black background and white foreground? I'm used to Putty windows with nice coloring but now that I have an X server, I'm baffled. For now, I have to start up xterms from the command line of another xterm to get sane colors that don't burn my retinas.
but there must be some default file I can set somewhere. The 100pp of documentation don't ever clearly say "you can put this text in that file and it will work." But I've tried putting
in .Xdefaults-localhost and that doesn't do
a thing.
I'd like to get rid of overstrike bolding, too. Man is that ever a bad idea.
my favotire thing about X is that now it's reasonable to have two xterms side by side at 1024x768. I complain about regular size X fonts all the time, but the small fonts beat Windoze Courier New and Terminal easily. The sizes are set right and the fonts are readable.
Brian
Fonts for Windoze coding: Andale Mono (Score:1)
Lucida (Score:1)
8x8 System Font (Score:2)
No matter what the platform, I use the standard 8x8 monospaced system font with all vertical lines at least 2 pixels wide.
Next, I bring the screen resolution down to the point where individual pixels are easily visible, and I set the background to a dark-to-medium blue or purple and use all brightly colored text. If syntax highlighting is available, keywords and symbols are white, numbers are green, comments are purple, and the rest is yellow.
For me, this makes it really easy to scan through code and stay in context.
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My opinions are mine.
Fixedsys (Score:2)
Charlie
(also an old school programmer)
Good ol' Borland color schemes ! (Score:2)
Text = Yellow
Keyword = White
Comment = Green
Number = Purple
String = Cyan
Operator = White
Does anyone know how to change the "standard" colors in Dev Studio? That magenta is next to useless, I would love to assign an arbitray color to it.
Font is (Score:2)
But I did just download neep, and it might be nice for a change.
I was using andale mono for a while - Microsoft's Truetype contribution to fixed width fonts.
My alltime favorite was dec terminal, but it is only available in 14 pt, which is not suitable on all the machines on which I code. But it reminds me of ForTran days hacking on VT terminals. Light green chars on a black background, using EDT.
All my current coding is black background, syntax highlighting on. Using JED with custom colors for highlighting.
I find that font size matters a lot (Score:2)
I usually code in 14 to 16 point font. I find that at this level most of the "standard" fonts are usable (i.e. something in the courer-TNR-arial-whatever family). I usually end up using a TrueType version of courier if it's available.
I also go out of my way to get a) syntax highlighting (becuase no matter how good I get at C I always forget that fscking terminating */ ;-) ) and b) a dark back ground color scheme (this way the lighter colors in a syntax schema show up better).
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Re:Fonts for Windoze coding: Andale Mono (Score:2)
Why, fonts designed just for that, of course! (Score:3)
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Black background web pages (Score:3)
The reason for this is the serifed fonts these pages use: the serifs are very useful for guiding the eye between letters in long lines of text when the text is dark and the background is light. In inverse colour, they actually make it hard to make out the shape of the letters, so a sans-serifed font is advisable.
Re:Black background web pages (Score:3)
Pick up any book on graphic design (by that I mean stuff like page layout). Any college of journalism will have at least one course on this (and by extension the college bookstore(s) will have the texts). My fiancee recently got her journalism degree (concentration in magazine design), so I've absorbed some of this stuff over her shoulder.
One book I got that does a pretty good job of explaining this stuff to amateurs is The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams (1994, Peachpit Press; $10.50 at www.bookpool.com [bookpool.com]). See specifically chapters 7 through 9 (the "Designing with type" section).
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Alternatively, (Score:3)
A black shell (heck - even DOS) with white characters has always been easier on my eyes than a bright GUI interface (like the Windows default) with black characters. I'm unsure why, because I have a hell of a time reading the black-background web pages out there like Segfault [segfault.org] or Planetquake [planetquake.com] to name a couple, but for some reason the old 80x25 black and white has always been easy on my eyes. Funny thing about the web sites, though - I have the problem on IE much more than on Netscape, but it's still there on both browsers. I end up highlighting all the text on the page just so I can read it.
If you're sticking with the windowed environments with more font choices, I'd have to say that I've always liked to work with Arial Black. It's not as harsh to focus on like the Courier or Times New Roman fonts that seem to be default just about everywhere. The characters are thicker and nicely rounded, and look good to me in many different resolutions.
Re:Why, fonts designed just for that, of course! (Score:4)
Wow. Just when you think something has fallen off into relative obscurity, it pops up in comments like the one above.
Unfortunately, Neep was a rather good first try. The last published version is over a year and a half old now, and suffers from several problems:
I myself have pretty much stopped using Neep and am using Lucida Console (10 pt, 100 dpi) instead[**] (though i still wish i could find actual bold, italic, and bold-italic variants so that i could use it with nedit [nedit.org]).
Regardless, if you must get Neep, please get it from http://www.jmknoble.cx/fonts/ [jmknoble.cx] rather than the place that points to [ntrnet.net]. Web pages move easily, but jmknoble.cx is likely to stick around for quite a while.
If someone is interested in maintaining jmk-x11-fonts further, using the improved, unpublished edition, feel free to contact me (address is listed at the bottom of this page [jmknoble.cx]). Note, though, that i'm liable to be slightly cranky, and i may not hand these over to just anyone; i'd prefer for the design goals and aesthetic sense to be preserved, since they do have my name on them....
[Sigh.] Success's sword has two edges. (And yes, Brainchild = Jim Knoble).
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[*] Markus Kuhn has converted the most recently (year-and-half-old) published version of Neep into Unicode fonts. I'm not sure whether he's published them or not; check here [cam.ac.uk]. I have them, though, and (as i mention above) am partway through the process of merging them with subsequent changes in the ISO-8859-* fonts. If enough folks ask (and it's okay with Markus), i suppose i could publish them if they're not available at his site.
[**] I've been through several iterations of "there must be something else out there that has what i want", and i continually come up with this: