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Comment by tshaddox | Hacker News Reader

It looks fine, but I think I'll always have trouble finding a coding font to replace Consolas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolas

I love Consolas, but Inconsolata (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconsolata) is a nice, friendly, take on it. I'd check it out if you haven't already–it's what I now use exclusively!

A great comparison of fonts that puts Inconsolata at the top. http://hivelogic.com/articles/top-10-programming-fonts

Inconsolata is also what I use exclusively. I make a point to install it on any new box that I'm going to be using regularly.

Thanks for the link. Note that it says Inconsolata is only at the top over Consolas because Consolas isn't free.

I love Inconsolata. I hate the curly quotes.

If you feel the same, check out Inconsolata-dz:

http://nodnod.net/2009/feb/12/adding-straight-single-and-dou...

Just tried it out on Windows 7 with ClearType (same settings I use with Consolas). I don't know if there's a problem with the way ClearType is rendering the font or what, but it looks terrible on my system. Is ClearType supposed to be disabled or what?

Screenshots:

11pt http://i.imgur.com/Weq4G.png

12pt http://i.imgur.com/L4UDZ.png

It isn't much better without ClearType, either. Inconsolata looks a /lot/ better on linux, so it could be something wrong with the font hinting.

Same thing here. Seems e isn't letting me disable cleartype either.

Yes, it will look weird because Consolas was designed specifically for ClearType (which is why it looks nowhere as good on OS X). Inconsolata was designed without it.

Similarly, Monaco doesn't look half as good on Windows :) Text rendering differs on OS X and Windows.

I'm on OSX, and suggest some alternatives to Consolas above:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1454649

Been looking for a good programming font, and was disappointed that the OP was not one, so thanks!

Consolas was designed for ClearType, but on a Mac, Consolas seems a touch heavy to me. Lucida Sans Typewriter and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono are also somewhat heavy, as are Menlo and Mensch.

I find Andale Mono to be the perfect blend of legibility, distinctive character forms, and lightness, for black letters on white background. With its shorter and rounded letterforms providing a sense of white space between lines, I suspect this font is reminding me of highly legible daisy wheel printouts. This is my font of choice for both coding and plain-text email. It's not as widely known, but people who use it become somewhat fanatical.

In Terminal I use amber on black, and find Monaco 10pt. better because of the line height and old school terminal feel. I suspect this font reminds me of the plotter-style vector fonts pre-dating MS-DOS. Like Consolas, Monaco has a slash through the zero, which I much prefer.

Just for fun, try http://sensi.org/~svo/glasstty/ in 20 pt (15 pt in Windows) terminal window. It's a DEC VT220 terminal glyph font complete with raster lines.

Sort of off-topic: I changed my Rxvt font in .Xresources from Envy Code R to Inconsolata to try it out, and the colors in my terminal got darker. Changing the font back to Envy Code R makes them bright again. (I use a dark background and normally the bright flavors of green, cyan, blue, etc.).

Why would changing the font affect the brightness of the colors in the terminal?

It is literally Microsoft's best contribution to fonts ever.

After Comic Sans.

Agreed, I've been using Consolas on linux for quite a while and can find no fault with it.

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