Macs ignore hinting when rendering antialiased. Try the prehinted version (probably 72 or 144 DPI). It also works best with dark on light on the Mac due to gamma.
Regarding PNGs, the samples are rendered with hRGB subpixel rendering. I don't think Macs have ever used anything else, but that may be a possibility. Hopefully its not just browser resizing.
The fact that light-on-dark text looks terrible on Macs isn't due to gamma—it's due to the fact that subpixel rendering for light-on-dark text is broken on Macs.
Generally I like Mac OS X's font rendering much better than Windows's, but this is one aspect that drove me up the wall when I was redesigning my personal website. (I wrote a bit about the issues I had with this bug in this article: http://kronopath.net/blog/dawn-of-a-new-day/. Search for "The bug".)
Always appreciate a new code font. This one seems to have a very laid-back, "fun" style, which is really not for me, but still nice to see work in this area.
(For reference, I use DejaVu Sans Mono, which is wonderfully plain and simple.)
Thanks. I can't say that I ever really thought of it as having a particularly "fun" style. Monaco and Monofur and some others always seemed far more so to me. It could just be that it feels plain to me at this point due to familiarity, however.
And yes, Deja is a good alternative too. I certainly used that one for a while.
Overall, great font! The only thing that I don't like is the lowercase i, but maybe I am just being picky. All of the characters are very easy to distinguish.
Source Code Pro looked good when I saw it in webpage images, but when I switched my iTerm2 to it, it looked very... stumpy.
Have not tried it in Linux yet. But DejaVu is the only font yet that I've found satisfying on both Mac and Linux (with Ubuntu's font rendering patches)
Looks good and I'm sure it'd appeal to a good chunk of people, but it's not for me I don't think.
User feedback: for me a font is more than something that is easily read. I value font's that, in some way, make it _fun_ to write. For example, the font with iA Writer is almost addicting in the way it tempts me to write more. Of course, however, you would want monospaced fonts for coding...
Definitely appreciate a new code font, even if this one doesn't so much look like it'd meet my everyday use. It's a bit too "thin", for lack of a better word, even if it does meet most of my requirements for distinguishing characters/numbers quickly.
But oh man do I love how readable that is at 5x11 pixels. That's beautiful, good work.
By "thin", do you mean narrow and condensed, or do you mean the weight of the stems? For the former I wanted a decent amount of code to fit on a line -- I tend not to like the expanded look of some fonts and prefer something a bit more condensed. If you mean the weight, that's something of a design constraint due to trying to keep it crisp at low resolutions by grid-fitting to whole pixel boundaries.
The "i" seems to be positioned weirdly (not a font expert). What I mean is that "int", "unsigned" and "Wizard" all look like the "i" is shifted slightly to the left.
I find that the biggest problem with the font as well. For a monospaced font, it doesn't look all that monospaced. Many of the glyphs have odd positioning. It gives the font a look of activity or "fun-ness" that doesn't match well with it's intending purpose as a coding font.
I am enjoying this font. At first when I saw the screenshots I thought I wouldn't. But, I like to give every new "programmer" font a try. I tried it and I didn't like it at first but it's quickly growing on me. Seems to work best at 13px in SublimeText 3 on my rMBP. If I make it smaller then I feel the need to add line padding.
Before this I was using Fantasque Sans Mono[1]. Thanks for sharing!
If you've spent time searching around for a great coding font, I recommending giving proportional fonts a try. Chances are your system has a proportional font with everything (else) you want.
"But things won't line up, right?" Not exactly, but I find that such concerns were a bit of a distraction, anyway. With a little emacs command, I can switch back to monospace when needed, which isn't all that often.
Like others, I applaud the OP's work and always appreciate a new typeface. Just wanted to share the viewpoint.
I moved away from Inconsolata because of the lowercase g, and I was excited about your link until I saw that despite it being called Inconsolata-g, the g has remained the same. Instead I now use the packaged font that comes with Espresso (Espresso Mono) (but I use it with Sublime Text, you can find the font in the Espresso package) and it's treating me well so far.
God damn, that's an ugly one. Super-thin, and look at the lowercase "i" slant backwards so much, it merges with the character before it, especially at small sizes.
Cool looking font, it reminds me of my handwriting style (especially the italicised version). If the author is around, can you explain why you chose to extend the brackets and parens below the base line of the other characters?
Thanks, and I'd be happy to explain. They extend from the bottom of the descenders to the top of the ascenders. So if you look at something like: [h][a][g], you'll see the 'a' is roughly centered and the top of the h and the bottom of the g line up. So for things like foo() and class blah { ... }; the o and semicolon are roughly centered vertically on the opening paren and closing brace, respectively.
If you look at Consolas, for example, you'll see this is hardly unique.
My terminal font of choice in recent times is Hermit (https://pcaro.es/p/hermit/) - very readable anti aliased font both in the terminal and within IDEs (on Linux). Somehow doesn't render as well on Windows (but then again, who uses Windows for serious work anyway ;)). I can't wait to try this out once I get my hands on my personal workstation, since there's no such thing as too many programming fonts.
Thanks for this! I Will try to use it in my app that generates analytics pdf! For coding I will stick to Anonymous Pro (which no one has mentioned yet!!)
This looks decent but not so great when using large sized fonts. I have yet to find a better font for my terminal than NanumGothic (http://dev.naver.com/projects/nanumfont/download). It was created from a large Korean web company called Naver and I love the horizontal spacing especially when using larger sized fonts (ie size 16 and above since I like fonts large on terminal)
Still haven't found anything that beats Consolas (at least on Windows machines). Inconsolata comes close, but the strokes are a bit thin and spacing is too crowded.
EDIT: OK actually I just tried the hinted TTF version of Inconsolata from Google Fonts [0] and the stroke width is way better. Still crowded - like each glyph takes up juuuuuust a little too much of its bounding rectangle (whatever you would call that).
Consolas stands out on Windows as it's highly tuned with ClearType in mind. Many excellent fonts that render fine on MacOS are almost unbearable on Windows, like Inconsolata.
I use Mac, not Windows, so I'm sure I see them rendered quite differently than you, but I prefer Source Code Pro.[1][2] They are extremely similar and I agree nothing else comes very close.
It's the lower-case 'i' that does it for me.[3]
Fewer serifs in general allow me to read more quickly, I feel. 'i' has 1 to Consolas' 3, while lower case 'l' (L) has 2 to Consolas' 3.
One negative is that I much prefer Consolas' 0-with-slant to Source Code Pro's 0-with-dot.
By the way, the first link below is from a very cool resource I just found with votes and comparisons of many of the most popular choices: http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming... (It seems the web has become more informative on this topic than the last time I surveyed all the font options.)
Finally, this is what the designer of Source Code Pro, Paul D. Hunt, had to say about the two[2]:
> Consolas is narrower than most monospaced fonts at 55% of the Em square, where I stuck with 60% for Source Code. If the narrowness is a top selling point for you, then Consolas is definitely king.
Another vote for Source Code Pro (Semibold 12, white on black, full screen gnome-terminal, compiz 3d workspace box spinning model yumminess). I also like some console fonts and frequently use them for coding on my laptop (17" Macbook Pro + Gentoo + 2xSSDs + ZFS).
Me too, I use source-code-pro almost everwhere (I have problems making it stick with AppleScript because I use different editors I believe). I love it.
Nice work. I'm in the middle of a big project so I don't want to take time to get used to a new font right now, but will try it again when I have some downtime.
N.B. I'm using Inconsolata right now, and have been for quite a few years.
NB: In Mac Terminal, the box drawing characters don't connect. This is far more common than not, the easiest-access font that does this correctly is Monaco. I mention because the home page lists the box drawing characters as a feature.
Interesting. I thought I'd tested that fairly recently, but I'll check that again. Do you see the gaps vertically between lines or horizontally between adjacent characters? (Or both?)
Luculent looks interesting, but I still haven't found anything that beats Ubuntu Mono on my machine. I think it's interesting that coding font preferences differ based on operating system. Regardless of operating system, the favorites I tend to see on threads like this are Ubuntu Mono, Dejavu Sans Mono, Inconsolata, Consolas, Source Code Pro, and Monaco.
I spend my life in idea IDE's on Linux and thanks to the shonky font rendering in swing apps on Linux the only two that I can standard are Deja Vu Sans Mono (which is nice) and Terminus at 16pt which then looks like Terminus bitmapped.
You're probably already aware of this, but just in case: it's possible to force Swing (and AWT) apps to use the system's font rendering with the "swing.aatext" and "awt.useSystemAAFontSettings" respectively.
While much better not quite right still and also I have some screens rotated so I have hrgb and vrgb which looks fuzzy, I played with setting it to gasp/lcd.
Using Terminus because it is a pixel perfect font with no aliasing means that rotation etc just don't matter.
103 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] thread(Yes, I know why this is the case technically, but I don't need to get into that to make my point.)
Regarding PNGs, the samples are rendered with hRGB subpixel rendering. I don't think Macs have ever used anything else, but that may be a possibility. Hopefully its not just browser resizing.
More info: http://www.lighterra.com/articles/macosxtextaabug/
Generally I like Mac OS X's font rendering much better than Windows's, but this is one aspect that drove me up the wall when I was redesigning my personal website. (I wrote a bit about the issues I had with this bug in this article: http://kronopath.net/blog/dawn-of-a-new-day/. Search for "The bug".)
(For reference, I use DejaVu Sans Mono, which is wonderfully plain and simple.)
And yes, Deja is a good alternative too. I certainly used that one for a while.
Have not tried it in Linux yet. But DejaVu is the only font yet that I've found satisfying on both Mac and Linux (with Ubuntu's font rendering patches)
User feedback: for me a font is more than something that is easily read. I value font's that, in some way, make it _fun_ to write. For example, the font with iA Writer is almost addicting in the way it tempts me to write more. Of course, however, you would want monospaced fonts for coding...
But oh man do I love how readable that is at 5x11 pixels. That's beautiful, good work.
By "thin", do you mean narrow and condensed, or do you mean the weight of the stems? For the former I wanted a decent amount of code to fit on a line -- I tend not to like the expanded look of some fonts and prefer something a bit more condensed. If you mean the weight, that's something of a design constraint due to trying to keep it crisp at low resolutions by grid-fitting to whole pixel boundaries.
I find that the biggest problem with the font as well. For a monospaced font, it doesn't look all that monospaced. Many of the glyphs have odd positioning. It gives the font a look of activity or "fun-ness" that doesn't match well with it's intending purpose as a coding font.
Best combination of readability and massive selection of Unicode glyphs of any fontface I've found.
Before this I was using Fantasque Sans Mono[1]. Thanks for sharing!
[1]: https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans
"But things won't line up, right?" Not exactly, but I find that such concerns were a bit of a distraction, anyway. With a little emacs command, I can switch back to monospace when needed, which isn't all that often.
Like others, I applaud the OP's work and always appreciate a new typeface. Just wanted to share the viewpoint.
Here's an example, you might not like the zero: http://i.imgur.com/QNpR2Og.png
If you look at Consolas, for example, you'll see this is hardly unique.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/anyfont/id821560738?mt=8
EDIT: OK actually I just tried the hinted TTF version of Inconsolata from Google Fonts [0] and the stroke width is way better. Still crowded - like each glyph takes up juuuuuust a little too much of its bounding rectangle (whatever you would call that).
[0] http://www.google.com/fonts#UsePlace:use/Collection:Inconsol...
It's the lower-case 'i' that does it for me.[3]
Fewer serifs in general allow me to read more quickly, I feel. 'i' has 1 to Consolas' 3, while lower case 'l' (L) has 2 to Consolas' 3.
One negative is that I much prefer Consolas' 0-with-slant to Source Code Pro's 0-with-dot.
By the way, the first link below is from a very cool resource I just found with votes and comparisons of many of the most popular choices: http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming... (It seems the web has become more informative on this topic than the last time I surveyed all the font options.)
Finally, this is what the designer of Source Code Pro, Paul D. Hunt, had to say about the two[2]:
> Consolas is narrower than most monospaced fonts at 55% of the Em square, where I stuck with 60% for Source Code. If the narrowness is a top selling point for you, then Consolas is definitely king.
[1]: http://www.slant.co/topics/67/viewpoints/5/~what-are-the-bes...
[2]: http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/09/source-code-pro....
[3]: http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/files/2012/09/Confusable...
http://mbauman.net/geek/2009/03/15/minor-truetype-font-editi...
http://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-cod...
Have you tried Ubuntu Mono? http://www.google.com/fonts#ReviewPlace:refine/Collection:In...
If you want to take a look see here : http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?event=d...
N.B. I'm using Inconsolata right now, and have been for quite a few years.
NB: In Mac Terminal, the box drawing characters don't connect. This is far more common than not, the easiest-access font that does this correctly is Monaco. I mention because the home page lists the box drawing characters as a feature.
http://font.ubuntu.com/
I spend my life in idea IDE's on Linux and thanks to the shonky font rendering in swing apps on Linux the only two that I can standard are Deja Vu Sans Mono (which is nice) and Terminus at 16pt which then looks like Terminus bitmapped.
I have the following in my IDEA .desktop file:
export _JAVA_OPTIONS='-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on -Dswing.aatext=true' && idea.sh %u
This is the result: http://i.imgur.com/3V9Nf3k.png
While much better not quite right still and also I have some screens rotated so I have hrgb and vrgb which looks fuzzy, I played with setting it to gasp/lcd.
Using Terminus because it is a pixel perfect font with no aliasing means that rotation etc just don't matter.