You know you've entered the highest pantheons of geekhood when you get excited about Microsoft's new fixed-width font, Consolas. I am always on the lookout for a better fixed-width programming font. After reading Scott's post, and then Steve's post, I was intrigued enough to copy it from a Vista install on to my XP box.
I have tried ProFont. I’m a Proggy man, personally.
On high-DPI displays, however, I can’t use bitmap fonts like Proggy and ProFont – they’re too small. In these cases I usually go with Andale Mono. I would consider Consolas if I had ClearType enabled.
Call me a rebel, but I actually prefer a proportional font, even when I’m programming. I don’t find there’s any reason to have a fixed width font as I don’t try to line text up with other lines.
I’m currently using Verdana 8pt font on 1600x1200 display and it looks great. I can see a lot of code at once.
I’ve also configured Visual Studio to display strings in a different color (Maroon) and that helps reviewing code as well.
Kiliman
Have you tried Triskweline, it’s a nice clean looking font and is a lot easier on the eyes than Courier.
a href="http://www.netalive.org/tinkering/triskweline/"http://www.netalive.org/tinkering/triskweline//a
I’m currently using ClearType on my 24" widescreen Dell at work.
I’ve been using it for the last few months and have gotten pretty used to it. But it still seems to make text look kinda blurry if I stop and stare.
On going evaluation…
I always run at 1920x1200 w/ cleartype on, which is perhaps why I like Consolas. Are you still using Courier? I was on Lucida Console for years, but have seen some rendering issues with the latest VS.
Like you, I’m always on the lookout for something better when it comes to my programming font.
Sorry I caused a stream of blood to come from your eyes 
Call me old-fashioned but I’m still hooked on Courier New, 8pt, ClearType. Nothing beats it - looks just like an old typewriter. Maybe I like it because my first experiences with programming was actually typing out FORTRAN programs on my Dad’s typewriter.
Consolas? Naah.
Call me crazy but lately I’ve been using Terminal, 6 point on Visual Studio. It takes a day to get used to, but the benefits are you can fit three times the amount of legible code onscreen. I like Courier New too, but 6 point Courier is not readable.
Personal recommendations for VS: “OCR A Extended” (comes with office or IE I believe), “OCRB” (comes with MS Works, I think), “Lucida Console” (with Windows XP, I guess).
I was disappointed with Consolas as well, but for different reasons. I currently use Monaco for every fixed-width font that I can replace with it. I compared it with Consolas using my standard ambiguous character test:
|!1lIi
0Oo
,.;:_-=+`’"
(){}[]
Consolas looks better than Monaco, it’s more compact, has better letter spacing, but its ‘l’ (lowercase ‘L’) looks too much like a ‘1’ (number one). I’ve tried tested every fixed-width font I’ve come across, and none can beat Monaco.
This article was a great help for me when looking for fonts: a href="http://www.lowing.org/fonts/"http://www.lowing.org/fonts//a I had been using ProFont before Monaco. If Consolas would just ditch that damn lower-left-serif in the ‘l’ I’d switch in a second. Everything else about it was perfect for me.
I was disappointed with Consolas as well, but for different reasons. I currently use Monaco for every fixed-width font that I can replace with it. I compared it with Consolas using my standard ambiguous character test:
|!1lIi
0Oo
,.;:_-=+`’"
(){}[]
Consolas looks better than Monaco, it’s more compact, has better letter spacing, but its ‘l’ (lowercase ‘L’) looks too much like a ‘1’ (number one). I’ve tried tested every fixed-width font I’ve come across, and none can beat Monaco.
This article was a great help for me when looking for fonts: http://www.lowing.org/fonts/ I had been using ProFont before Monaco. If Consolas would just ditch that damn lower-left-serif in the ‘l’ I’d switch in a second. Everything else about it was perfect.
It is indeed quite nice, but 90 euros? I just tried “convert 90 euros to dollars” in google and got:
90 Euros = 110.05200 U.S. dollars
Ouch. For ONE font?
Best mono programmers fonts I have seen are available from a href="http://www.procon.com.au/Fonts.htm."http://www.procon.com.au/Fonts.htm./a
I use their raster font (HVRaster) but they also have a TTF version of the font (HVEdit). The fonts have clear distinctions between all characters and make optimal use of screen width and depth to squeeze more columns and lines on the screen. Work well in Visual Studio.
Well, the Consolas font looks reasonably ok, but I really would like if the Lucida Console 10pt to look like Lucida Console 14pt - IMHO the best font ever (there’s a notably difference occurring between 13pt/14pt).
–larsw
try bold italic. Very nice.
My favorite programming font, the one I find myself always going back to, is Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.
You can find more at http://www.gnome.org/fonts/
my vote for Bitstream Vera too. Because it is usable with anti aliasing. Monaco is nice, but italic text gets wider and it is not available in small characters on pc.
I like Consolas, although I recently found out that it demands some edition of VS installed to allow installation. Bummer!
The Bitstream Vera family is another personal favorite. For work purposes I use DejaVu Sans, an open source font family based on the Bitstream fonts but extending it by adding Unicode fonts. It’s Unicode coverage is impressive and keeps on growing. Check it out at http://dejavu.sf.net.
Why not go use Dejavu Sans Mono?