Slightly OT:Monospaced Fonts

SteveH · Post by **SteveH** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 7:08 am

Over the last few months I have been trying to find the perfect monospaced font for use in TextPad (both for display and for printing) and also for use on my PowerBook running OS X. If my mac-loving associates are to be believed, Windows users just don't care about fonts and you guys will all be using Courier because that's the TextPad default. I have kind of settled for Andale Mono in TextPad and Monaco under OS X. Neither of these seems to work brilliantly away from home and I am not a huge fan of Andale Mono when printed, particularly as the font size is never quite right.

I guess I am looking for the Grand Unified Font (TM).

I wouldn't be averse to putting my hand in my pocket to buy a font but the only that has given me enough confidence that it would work is TheSans Mono (as used in many of the O'Reilly books) but as this costs large amounts of money I doubt it will ever come my way. I've tried the open source Bitstream fonts in the Vera family which work well printed but poorly on the screen. The Bitstream Prima Sans family also looks quite tempting. Whatever I end up using needs to work at quite small font sizes - 8 point in TextPad under Windows 2000.

Given the large proportion of monospaced font users in this forum I thought I would canvas opinions. Are the mac-users wrong? Does anyone have any recommendations?

Cheers,

Steve

agnul · Post by **agnul** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 8:20 am

A long time ago I went looking for the Grand Unified Font (TM) too, and settled for Andale Mono, for lack of better alternatives. Your post made me look again, and stumble on this list. Hope it helps.

SteveH · Post by **SteveH** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 8:55 am

I've seen that list and tried some of the fonts in the past. The page seems to list a lot of bitmap fonts (such as console) and I would be much happier with true type. Pragmata looks like a possible choice byt the link is to a PayPal account which doesn't look too convincing.

I suppose the ideal solution would be a font in Opentype format to be compatible with all platforms but good Opentype monospaced fonts seem to be pretty rare.

Cheers,

Steve

ben_josephs · Post by **ben_josephs** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:19 am

I have used Lucida Console for all monospaced applications (command-line, editor, code samples in word-processed documents, etc.) for years, and I'm very happy with it. I find it very readable at small sizes; I can view 85 lines with ease in a TextPad document window on a monitor at 1280x1024 (TextPad font size 8). Does Lucida Console not suit you?

SteveH · Post by **SteveH** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:55 am

Compared to Andale Mono, I've found it to be a little cramped at the same font size. I've just checked it again and for eight point fonts, Andale is significanly clearer. Lucida console a good choice (certainly beter than courier) as it is present on all Windows systems I guess, but I don't know how well it would transfer to other OS.

Cheers,

Steve

ben_josephs · Post by **ben_josephs** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 10:25 am

What size do you use Andale at? It's OpenType, and that doesn't render well here at small sizes (TextPad size 8) - it doesn't look very black. And changing the size sometimes results only in a change of leading. Is Andale available in TrueType?

SteveH · Post by **SteveH** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 10:42 am

Renders okay here at 8 point and 1280X1024. The zero's look a little ragged which is one of the reasons I don't like it hugely.

It is an Opentype font on my Windows 2000 box but you can download it as TrueType from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... p_id=34153

This is an exe file but it looks like it's just a WinZip selfextractor so it should be possible to open it on other platforms too.

Cheers,

Steve

s_reynisson · Post by **s_reynisson** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 3:37 pm

(If you like Andele you might want to look at the Vera family here.- edit never mind that one pls)

I'm looking for the Monospace shell font in Fedora for Windows, it's a serif and if I paste this Monospace into OpenOffice I get Bitstream Vera Serif. But not Serif and monospaced. The best I've seen so far is not free... see here under Cincinnatus, it "actually looks like a real font".

s_reynisson · Post by **s_reynisson** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:06 pm

Lot's of free fonts here, perhaps to much! I'm still looking for a free version of something like the "Cincinnatus" font, ie. monospaced serif like in the Linux Fedora Core shell. Perhaps there is a way to port it from Linux to Windows. Will post info on it if I find a way.

mo · Post by mo » Wed Dec 01, 2004 11:40 am

S_R,

If you can copy the font and e-mail it to me, I have a font creation/conversion program and I'll give it a try.

s_reynisson · Post by **s_reynisson** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 3:29 pm

That's just it, I can see the font in the linux shell but I'm unable to find it on my system, perhaps this "Monspace" font is just an alias for some other standard system font like Courier

agnul · Post by **agnul** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 3:41 pm

Maybe you're using Luxi Mono ? Used to be the default monospaced font before Bitstream Vera.

s_reynisson · Post by **s_reynisson** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 4:02 pm

Not Luxi mono, that's a much "heavier" font, with this "Monospace" you can take it's size down to 8 and up to 64 and it looks great all the time. Btw. it's even well readable in size 6!

SteveH · Post by **SteveH** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 8:54 am

Is that the same Cincinnatus that is at http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/scriptorium/cincinnatus/?

There is is shown as a decorative font.

If you do manage to locate the font on you Fedora machine I too would like to check out a copy.

Cheers,

Steve

merlsub · Post by **merlsub** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 6:41 pm

I hear you! A while ago I found this Monospac821 BT font that I find very pleasing to the eye. I forgot where I got it... but I just put my ttf here:

http://merl.us/tmp/font/monosb.ttf

if you want to try it.

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