ProFont

A very useful recommendation, except the bit where Joel says "For best results use the FON version, not the TTF version". I'm currently stuck at work with a laptop that only does 1024x768, and  TTF Profont + ClearType enabled is a great way of getting to see a decent amount of code visible.

The FON version does seem better without ClearType, but I can't see any reason to use an LCD monitor without taking advantage of its most significant benefit over  CRT.

Cris Bennett
Monday, November 24, 2003

Personally I don't like ProFont. But then again, I never really liked the old Mac 'Monaco' font, despite putting in a lot of time coding with it.

A pretty good monospaced font to use is Andale Mono, which is a free download from MS (just do a search there). Has a lot of the benefits of ProFont including distinctive zero and 'O', distinctive one and lowercase 'l' etc.

Better height to width ratio too.

Robi Khan
Monday, November 24, 2003

Agreed on Andale Mono for general purposes -- but for the very specific purpose of a small (7pt) font on an LCD screen with ClearType enabled, ProFont works better IMO. Very readable, neither blurry nor jagged, lots of code visible on the screen.

Cris Bennett
Monday, November 24, 2003

I'll definitely have to try that...

For some reason I just can't get used to zero having a dot or bar in the middle.

Some people love anti-aliased text and some people hate it. I love it, but my dad hates it with a vengeance...

Dan Maas
Monday, November 24, 2003

I am surprised how much of a difference sub pixel positioning makes on LCDs.  It is amazing really. 

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Monday, November 24, 2003

All this talk about cleartype made me want to try it out.  So I did, totally fuzzy and made my eyes hurt.  Dell Inspiron 5100 with 1400x1050 resolution.

Andrew Hurst
Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Any chance of a link to download "Andale Mono". I couldn't find it on MS's site.

Matthew Lock
Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Didn't Microsoft pull their free font downloads some time ago?

John Topley (www.johntopley.com)
Tuesday, November 25, 2003

There was a recent thread on this:

http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=84341

in which there was a link to a place where to download andale mono:

http://www.zeuscat.com/andrew/software/corefonts/

Have fun

jcm
Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Oh and by the way, I tried almost all of the fonts mentionned and I found sheldon 9 to be the most readable on my 14.1" 1024x768 lcd screen. ProggyClean and ProggySquare being runners up.

For what it's worth ;)

jcm
Tuesday, November 25, 2003

I too preferred Sheldon 9 over ProFont. Sheldon 9 had been kerning and seemed like "computery" than ProFont.

Testing these fonts, I was inspired to create my own micro-font: "Starlight 9". It was similar to Sheldon 9, but my punctuation was not as bold. I test-drove my Starlight font for a week. I was pretty happy, until I accidentally reset my font back to Courier New... and it was much easier on my tired eyes.

So now I'm back with my old familiar Courier New. I feel like I wasted my time trying to create my own font, but at least it was an educational exercise.  <:-)

runtime
Tuesday, November 25, 2003

I've always used Lucida Console, which has been a standard Windows font for a long time. It's very legible in sizes from 8 upwards. Judging by the examples on the web page, Profont looks quite similar.

Michael Wild
Tuesday, December 2, 2003

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