[home]

Monospaced typefaces or fonts for programming

This document lays out what I personally look for in a typeface for use with terminal emulators and code editors, as well as my views on typefaces with which I've had a notable experience.

Requirements

• Disambiguation of look-alike glyphs
  • the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
  • THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
  • ji1l|I {[( )]} O0 S5$ uvvw Z2 ,. ;: '`‘’"“”
• Comfortable horizontal and vertical glyph alignments
  • Hello World!@#$%^&*()-_=+`~,<.>/?;:'"[{]}\|

Bonus points

• Top-aligned asterisk (*)
• Centered tilde (~)

Top contender: PT Mono

URL: https://company.paratype.com/pt-sans-pt-serif

Available under the ad-hoc PT FFL 1.3 and the SIL OFL 1.1 licenses.

OpenType typeface principally designed by Alexandra Korolkova. Not designed specifically for screen use but performs well regardless. Tends to look good not matter how you throw it at the wall. Outstanding hinting. Usable with or without anti-aliasing. Some alignments are odd. This is currently my preferred monospaced typeface.

Mirrors available here:

• ptmono-ffl-1_003.zip (FFL)
• ptmono-ofl-1_003.zip (OFL)

The other guy: Terminus

http://terminus-font.sourceforge.net/

Available under the SIL OFL 1.1 license.

Bitmap typeface by Dimitar Toshkov Zhekov. Outline conversions exist but I found the non-strike sizes to be unusable. Doesn't italicize very well. I use the ll2 and td1 variants. I switch to it periodically.

Samples

The pit

• Inconsolata
  • Many odd design choices
  • Missing, lackluster or outright antagonistic hinting
  • Used this for a long time out of habit. It rarely bothered me. Surely this means that typeface choice is not critical
• Inconsolata-g
  • Same as Inconsolata with different odd design choices
• Code New Roman
  • A few odd design choices
  • Mediocre hinting
  • I want to like it but I can't

[top]