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Programming IT Technology

What Font Do You Use For Coding? 37

Posted by Cliff from the typefaces-that-don't-give-you-migraines dept.
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.
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What Font Do You Use For Coding? More

What Font Do You Use For Coding?

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  • Under X I use the good old: -Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-SemiCondensed--13-120-75-75-C -60-ISO8859-1
    (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.

  • Excellent coding font; I've done the same (terms, emacs, browser monospace). The variable pitch lucida is good too. I keep meaning to find a font editor to fix the few problems; "l" vs. "1", "O" vs. "0", and "rn" vs. "m".

    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...

  • I agree with this. Our office spaces were re-done about a year ago and they put in three florescent lights per office (two people in each office). Most of the people on my hall had the maintenance people turn off one or two of the fixtures. It helped us read our screens much more easily.

    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).

  • ouch. I hurt just thinking about that setup.
    ---
  • I have Lucida Typewriter installed as TT on this winbox. Can't say that I ever use it, mostly because it's not hinted, so it scales down below 12pts really poorly.

    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.
    --
  • I find that black 9pt Verdana on snow in XEmacs is excellent... lots of text on screen at once. Also, it's spookily similar to the look of CodeWarrior on the Mac...

  • Fixed (Score:1)

    by Ekman ( 60679 )
    I use, in X speak, -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c -60-iso8859-1 which is aliased in XFree86 as just plain "fixed." It's a clean monospaced font that's easy to read at 1024x768.
  • You could always try Eterm [eterm.org], my emulator of choice. Has a lot more visual options.


    - Milo Hyson

  • 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.

  • I made my own 5x9 font, because Lucida Console didn't look good enough at 7 pt. (on my Windows box @ work)

    I still need to convert the bitmap graphics over to a True Type font. Anyone have any tools to recommend?
  • My favorite color scheme has always been the old DOS WordPerfect one: white characters on a dark blue background... perhaps the only thing I like about NT4 is its nostalgic startup screen in the same colors. I read somewhere once that some study had determined this to be the best color combination for your eyes...

    ...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...

  • found it in sumex mac repository in both type-1 and truetype - it was modeled by typo freaks to match the IBM Selectric type ball... which looks like an egg. Their notes say that they hated Adobe's Letter Gothic because it wasn't monotype... this one is.
  • I use one called "Terminal", nice VT100 type.
  • In my Mac IDE I use the following settings: font color: black, background color: white with yellow tint (r255 g252 b250) font face: Courier 10pt.
    It looks nice and doesnt hurt my eyes at 1024x768.
  • At work I have to use Windows NT to run a specialist financial application which is required as part of my work.

    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 font, size 11. Nothing beats a "typewriter" font!!
  • Proportional fonts rock for coding!
    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/Y ate.htm [geocities.com]
    (Looks best at 1600x1200)

    -ShunScene
  • Thank you very much. That sounds like exactly what I wanted to read.
  • That sounds very interesting, but can you back it up?

    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.

  • You may like Xemacs (not emacs).

    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.

  • Some nice fonts for coding and other fixed pitch applications: Monospaced Fonts for the Screen [bsu.edu] are here. Since I use Windows at work, I grabbed MS's Andale Mono for the web here [microsoft.com]. It's a nice font for coding (at least to me) and doesn't require any license payments.

  • 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.

  • Trust me, this is both easier on the eyes and easier to read than any other combo I have found.

    -Kasreyn

  • 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

    xterm*background: black xterm*foreground: white

    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

  • Another mono-spaced font. It is a serif font, just, the serifs are pretty minor and that makes it much more readable at small point sizes :-) It's made by M$ themselves I think, but I get it from softseek [softseek.com] (preview available).
  • Lucida Console is an agreeable font in Win32... very readable even at obnoxiously small point sizes, like 8pt. Plus, the number 1 and the letter L are quite distinct from one another. Hot-diggety!

  • 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.



    ---
    My opinions are mine.
  • When working in windoes I use the old standby - Fixedsys - The font is bold enough to be read

    Charlie
    (also an old school programmer)
  • Dark Blue background
    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.
  • Lucida console

    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 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).


    --
    News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]
  • Andal Mono 8 point is my coding default, on a 17-inch monitor at 1152x864 resolution. When I really need to see as much code as possible on my screen, I'll change down to HyperFont bit-mapped 8 point [bsu.edu]. I found a very useful review of monospace fonts here [bsu.edu].

  • Why, fonts designed just for that, of course! (Score:3)

    by drix ( 4602 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @10:30AM (#387638) Homepage
    If you've spent any reasonable amount of time coding with standard fonts you've probably come to notice that standard fonts suck for coding :) { looks almost identical to ( (in monospace), ditto O and 0, : and ;, etc. A guy named Jim Knoble puts out a set of fonts called "Neep" that are designed specifically to address these issues. You can get them here [ntrnet.net]. I switched over to these using a high-contrast color scheme in Emacs a few months ago and my eyes love me for it. If you are having problems with squinting/eye strain you should give these a shot.

    --

  • Black background web pages (Score:3)

    by alisdair mcdiarmid ( 64568 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @08:07AM (#387639)
    I'm unsure why, because I have a hell of a time reading the black-background web pages out there like Segfault or Planetquake to name a couple, but for some reason the old 80x25 black and white has always been easy on my eyes.

    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)

    by StandardDeviant ( 122674 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @01:32PM (#387640) Homepage Journal

    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).


    --
    News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]

  • Alternatively, (Score:3)

    by JediTrainer ( 314273 ) on Saturday March 03, 2001 @06:55AM (#387641)
    what colour schemes? When coding, I found it to be less a problem about specific fonts than I did about the brightness of what I was looking at.

    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.
  • A guy named Jim Knoble puts out a set of fonts called "Neep" that are designed specifically to address these issues. You can get them here.

    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:

    • The single quote (') and grave accent (`) characters have good, but wrong, intentions. They follow the old and misguided [cam.ac.uk] glyph forms ('9'-shaped right quote and backwards-'9'-shaped left quote) perpetuated by otherwise useful programs such as gcc and groff. At the time, i was following the lead of the then-prevalent 'fixed' family of fonts shipped with XFree86. I am sorry for the consequences of my ignorance.

    • The fonts are designed for increasingly obsolete 75-dpi displays. When i recently (nine months ago is recently?) switched most of my X displays to default to 100 dpi (and my fontservers to 100 dpi fonts), i discovered that Neep doesn't provide 100 dpi variants. At 1280x1024 on a 17-inch monitor, -*-neep-medium-r-normal-*-*-120-75-75-*-*-iso8859- * is just too small. And i don't like -*-neep-medium-r-normal-*-*-140-75-75-*-*-iso8859- *, even in its unpublished, more legible form. I made that one because other folks wanted it. ;)

    • Neep does not come in Unicode/ISO-10646 encoding. It was a mistake for me not to make Neep into a Unicode font to begin with. I apologize for the consequences of my ignorance.[*]

    • Related to the above points: Neep is composed of beautiful, legible, hand-tuned bitmaps, and i just plain have kein Bock mehr to make more and bigger sizes, not to mention merging the existing, improved, but unpublished ISO8859-* fonts with Markus Kuhn's[*] UCS-encoded ones. I really wish i had learned how to create and hint TrueType or OpenType fonts instead of making bitmaps, so i could be lazy and simply make two or three fonts instead of fifty-some.

    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).

    ________________
    [*] 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:

    • Andale Mono [microsoft.com] is nice, but it has too much leading (at least, after getting used to the Lucida type family) and its punctuation is too light.
    • Lucida Sans Typewriter has the single-quote problem in XFree86-3.3.x, and it's neither TrueType nor UCS-encoded.
    • Courier New [microsoft.com] has too much leading, is too light in normal weight and too heavy in bold weight, and is much too ugly in any weight.
    • None of the other easily available monospace fonts [bsu.edu] look as good or legible to me as Lucida Console.
    Oh well.

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