Monospaced font?

dixonc · Post by **dixonc** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 2:38 pm

Never used Wildedit so not sure of I've interpreted the screenshot correctly....

On the screenshot (http://www.textpad.com/products/wildedi ... index.html) there is a Monospaced Fonts option. Does this mean we can use any font, e.g. Ariel, as a fixed width font (like courier) and if so, can we have it in the next TextPad release please!!!!! (I seem to remember someone asking if this was possible in an earlier posting and I thought then it was a good idea plus if it's in one Helios product it should be fairly easy to copy over?)

Thanks

ben_josephs · Post by **ben_josephs** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 4:07 pm

I don't use WildEdit, but curiosity made me look, as the effect you are looking for would be bizarre.

Well, it doesn't do that. It just switches between Verdana and Courier New.

But why would you want to do such a thing? Fonts are designed with great care, and the spacing between the characters is part of the design. If you changed just this one aspect of the design the result would be absurd. Take a look at the 'i' and 'm' of a monspaced font, and then at those of a normal font.

dixonc · Post by **dixonc** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 8:21 am

I'd like to be able to do it as for writing software as monospaced fonts make it easier for formatting, lining things up etc. I currently use courier and although it's ok it's not brilliant at small font sizes (8, 9).

Bizarre or not, the ability to use an existing widely used font, such as Ariel, in monospaced mode would be useful (or a decent monospace font which judging by an earlier thread seems a fairly difficult task http://www.textpad.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5895)

ben_josephs · Post by **ben_josephs** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:57 am

To use a normal font monospaced you'd have to increase the character spacing between almost every letter pair. You can't decrease it by much, if at all, or it will be unreadable. If you want to use Arial monospaced at the pitch of 8-point Lucida Console or Courier New (so that your lines of code don't get longer), and if you don't decrease any character spacing, then you'll have to use Arial at about 5.75 point. This would not be more readable than 8-point Courier.

I plainly don't have enough to do, as I've succumbed to curiosity again. I've actually tried this, by adjusting the character spacing manually, for my own amusement. The text is unreadably small, of course, and the overall character spacing is far too great (2 points between most letter pairs). But the result is even more bizarre and unreadable than I expected, as the enormous variation in white space makes the text look more like an eye test chart than a sequence of words.

ninjalabs · Post by **ninjalabs** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 2:22 pm

try Andale Mono. You can get the ttf if you google for it.

It's like Arial except that it has a dot in the middle of the zero and you can tell L and l and 1 apart easily.

Jan Paul · Post by **Jan Paul** » Tue Jun 07, 2005 6:01 pm

I use Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.
Great font for programming!

SteveH · Post by **SteveH** » Wed Jun 08, 2005 7:25 am

I thought I should get involved in this as I started the previous thread on monospaced fonts.

There is an Arial Monospace font already available but it looks like it would involve paying some money for it. Andale mono is an excellent alternative and available for free download - I think it may even be on Sourceforge. It's a great programmer's font - reads well on the screen at small sizes and prints well.

I totally agree that you want to get away from courier and switch to a sans serif font for on screen use at small sizes.

Cheers,

Steve