One of the first things a lot of programmers do when creating creating a new Eclipse workspace, or installing a new IDE, is assign fonts. What criteria do you look for in your fonts? What size do you prefer, and what font do you actually use? (In the interest of openness: I use Lucida Console 8 more often than any other, although I'm trying out Monte Carlo at present. The strokes aren't bold enough for my happiness yet, but it's growing on me, like a fungus.)

Comic Sans, 32pt, red. Makes my eyes bleed, but I figure its no worse than reading the ridiculous Ottingerisms on here, right? ;-) Roy Russo http://www.loopfuse.com

Comic Sans, 32pt, red.

Makes my eyes bleed, but I figure its no worse than reading the ridiculous Ottingerisms on here, right? ;-)

Roy Russo
http://www.loopfuse.com

LOL! I prefer Webdings for javascript and Wingdings 3 for Java - both in light yellow on a white background.

Fixedsys all the way baby. And with FixedsysTTF (http://fixedsys.moviecorner.de/?l=1), I can even use it in Swing apps! ;-)

Andale Mono is another font to consider: It's a bit wider than Consolas, and the bold version is a bit less pronounced. Note that a font that looks great on one screen may look unreadable on another screen (with different font sizes, aliasing settings etc).

I must say that Consolas looks like crap on my 1920x1600 windows screen. I can't understand how any of you can use it, really. It doesn't look like the sample here at all, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolas Will widescreen make a difference how fonts are rendered or what?

I must say that Consolas looks like crap on my 1920x1600 windows screen

Have you enabled antialiasing ? I did in IDEA and now the font looks quite nice, indeed.

I use Monaco on the Mac. Note, IntelliJ does not default to it, so this is usually the first thing I change.

Jeff Atwood has a pretty good writeup here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000157.html and here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000157.html I've switched to Consolas on my vista box and am pretty happy with it. YMMV.

Am also using Consolas on Windows, which I'm in love with right now. Moved from Andale Mono, which is also very, very clean and nice. I will probably try Incosolata (http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html) if he ever releases the silly thing. Way back when, when I did a little MacHacking, it was Monaco.

Yes, Consolas is very good. I use it on XP, too.

+1 for Consolas Download Microsoft Consolas Font For Free: http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/archives/2007/02/07/download-microsoft-consolas-font-for-free/

Verdana 8pt in eclipse. Regards, Yuri Vrancken

Verdana 8pt in eclipse.

Regards, Yuri Vrancken

I use Verdana 0.5pt in eclipse. Jan

Why do people still use a monospaced font? What is the advantage? ASCII art? I use Tahoma Regular 10 (Windows XP).

Pretty obvious, I thought: With monospaced fonts, your space/tab indentations line up properly.

The indentation at the beginning of the line is the same with proportional fonts. The only difference is indentation of lists, but that's disabled in most coding styles. And tables in Javadoc should be written in HTML. So, I don't see any advantage of monospace fonts for source code, sorry.

I download the Consolas from MS. And find It NEED VS2005 installed. So I think it is not for me - A java man ^_^

I prefer Dina with 8pt in Eclipse (Windows XP).

Well, I tend to use a pretty big font (small fonts give me a headache) so that often rules out a couple of popular programming font families that only come in size 8. Frankly, for Eclipse I currently just use monospace Fixed, size 14 (on Linux). It's crisp and clear and seems to do the job fine. (I'm not that picky about the actual font style beyond monospace and size.) I choose similarly in my consoles/shells: Fixed Misc, but size 12 this time. (I can't stomach the smaller font for console output.) FYI - a lot of people swear by proggyfont - you might want to check it out.

I use Monospaced 12pt. BTW: Best keyboard is the Microsoft Keyboard 2000. Which keyboard do you prefer?

Which keyboard do you prefer?

FFS. What about pen ? Or color of PostIt note ? Sad

Which keyboard do you prefer?

FFS. What about pen ? Or color of PostIt note ?

Sad

Rotring Expandable Pen; yellow.

Monospaced. All characters are unique i.e. 1lI are all distinct.

I've been using Bitstream Vera on Windows and Linux for several years. (http://www.gnome.org/fonts/) I was under the impression that Consolas is only available if you buy certain MS development products, so I've never seen it. Regards John Hurst Wellington, New Zealand

I've always been a Lucida Sans Typewriter man myself but I'd like to give Consolas a try although it looks like you have to have a license for Visual Studio (which I wouldn't buy under gunpoint).

Nope. Pretty sure you don't need Visual Studio. Downloaded it myself a while ago and not looked back; used to be a Lucida Console man until then. Try this: Microsoft website Consolas download

I just setup Consolas font in IDEA and... I think it looks very ugly. Maybe it takes some time to get used to it. But in my opinion the default font (Monospaced) is the best.

Nope. Pretty sure you don't need Visual Studio. Downloaded it myself a while ago and not looked back; used to be a Lucida Console man until then. Try this: Microsoft website Consolas download

It says right on that page "This package is only intended for licensed users of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005." The legit way I heard to get Consolas is to install the latest Power Point viewer. Some web page had some song and dance procedure you could do to get Consolas working on Linux and pointed people at Power Point viewer.

I'm a sucker for coding fonts (as well) Have been using 'Consolas' for quite a while though, coming from Vera Sans.

i need this feature ... i want to zoom the whole class or, late at night, focus just on a single if ... Scintilla editors (scite, notepad++, notepad2, etc, etc ) zoom code very smootly: http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html #2 in my personal wishlist is dynamic (per window) editor color theme selection. in emacs, i can select quickly (2 keys), the best coding colors, depending on my humor. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/GNUEmacsColorThemeTest/index-java.html ... about fonts, my eclipse default is Lucida Sans Unicode (10 pt) with default colors, good alternatives are Myriad Pro Semibold Condensed 14 or Tw Cen MT Condensed 22 pt, but only with a dark background.

I always used default one: Courier New-10 and it looks fine. When I tried to change font to the other ones mentioned here...it looks weird... I guess I got used to it...oh well...

Java (JVM) font rendering has always been a pain ... (j6 promised a lot but fonts are still not good enough for non swt java editors). In any case, the only ttf fonts distributed with jre are the famous "lucida" series. Lucida Sans Typewriter 9pt is a natural choice. (it is narrower than Courier, so more code fits in your monitor, but it is a matter of taste).

Lucida Sans Typewriter 9pt is a natural choice.

(it is narrower than Courier, so more code fits in your monitor, but it is a matter of taste).

That is the problem in my case, I do not need narrower font. I use wide monitor... so that I see my 110 chars per line just fine and without eye pain.

Font:Courier New Size:9 Background Color: black

I code in Wingdings .. Peace, Cameron Purdy Oracle Coherence: Data Grid for Java and .NET

I code in Wingdings ..

I can imagine now that your working for Oracle. ... you don't need to code anyway, right? Everything is done with wizards ;-)

I code in Wingdings

What? Did you become a manager? What happens to the world? :)

I currenly use the Proggy Clean and it is quite nice to use. I also use it under Linux.

under linux i am using Terminus for _everything_

I use Eclipse and previously preferred Lucida Console, but since Consolas became available I have used it and find it to be superior. I also change the background color to a light grey and enable all the "advanced" syntax coloring in Eclipse, and find it very effective.

Every time I set up mu Eclipse IDE, the first thing I do is to change my background color to gray, my current line highlight to white and the matching bracket highlights to yellow. Later, I set up my Java Editor Text Font to Courier New, 8pt, Normal. It's my preferred one when I'm coding.

I'v tried all the normal choices presented in this thread, but recently stumbled upon an unknown hero, a font called 'Anonymous'. It's a monospaced font, very light and readable, and significantly different than the rest. I don't have a link right now, but it's free and well worth bit of googling. /Henri Karapuu

I'v tried all the normal choices presented in this thread, but recently stumbled upon an unknown hero, a font called 'Anonymous'. It's a monospaced font, very light and readable, and significantly different than the rest. I don't have a link right now, but it's free and well worth bit of googling.

/Henri Karapuu

I can't begin to tell you how much I worried about googling for "anonymous" but: http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymous.html

I can't begin to tell you how much I worried about googling for "anonymous" but:

http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymous.html

Yep, thats the right one. I almost awarded you 2nd level Certificate of Proficient Search Engine Use, but then i tested that the link came as the first result with rather creative keywords "font anonymous" :) Sorry, no certificate today, i hope you'll survive :) Font size 12 with anti-aliasing. I swear to god it reduces head-ache after long day of coding. /Henri Karapuu

I can't begin to tell you how much I worried about googling for "anonymous" but:

http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymous.html

Yep, thats the right one.

I almost awarded you 2nd level Certificate of Proficient Search Engine Use, but then i tested that the link came as the first result with rather creative keywords "font anonymous" :) Sorry, no certificate today, i hope you'll survive :)

Font size 12 with anti-aliasing.

I swear to god it reduces head-ache after long day of coding.

/Henri Karapuu

Aw, darn it. Well, what can I say - you gave me very little to work with, and it's not a font I'm familiar with. *shrug* Gave it a shot.

Aw, darn it. Well, what can I say - you gave me very little to work with, and it's not a font I'm familiar with. *shrug*

Heh okey, if you want a more difficult challenge, try to find bold version of that font. I failed on that task. And IDEA (unlike eclipse) does not support 'faking' bold font variants, afaik. /Henkka Karapuu

I'v tried all the normal choices presented in this thread, but recently stumbled upon an unknown hero, a font called 'Anonymous'. It's a monospaced font, very light and readable, and significantly different than the rest. I don't have a link right now, but it's free and well worth bit of googling.

/Henri Karapuu

I'm giving it a shot now. I found light-colored syntax highlighting was not readable in that font. I've adjusted the tone of the offending colors and it's fine.

I'v tried all the normal choices presented in this thread, but recently stumbled upon an unknown hero, a font called 'Anonymous'. It's a monospaced font, very light and readable, and significantly different than the rest. I don't have a link right now, but it's free and well worth bit of googling.

/Henri Karapuu

I'm giving it a shot now. I found light-colored syntax highlighting was not readable in that font. I've adjusted the tone of the offending colors and it's fine.

Actually this appears to be some sort of rendering problem in Eclipse. When I scroll really fast, text in certain colors looks ghostly. When I scroll more slowly, everything looks fine. The curly brackets are going to take a little getting used to. They look stretched-out to me but I suppose it's good that they look very dissimilar to parenthesis.

Actually this appears to be some sort of rendering problem in Eclipse. When I scroll really fast, text in certain colors looks ghostly.

Forcing Eclipse to use a 1.6 JRE resolved this.

http://www.subgenius.com/SUBFONTS/BOBCO.zip I use it with a pink background.

You can change the font? :) Actually i use this neat font that changes the language for each word. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Pig latin, Elmer Fuddisms, ...

OMG, why are almost all of you using such small fonts? For me if a method doesn't fit in 100 lines it should be refactored into smaller ones. I use Terminus 14 (and I want something bigger but Terminus doesn't have 16, and the 18 is looks ugly)

OMG, why are almost all of you using such small fonts?

For me if a method doesn't fit in 100 lines it should be refactored into smaller ones.

I use Terminus 14 (and I want something bigger but Terminus doesn't have 16, and the 18 is looks ugly)

A lot of this depends on the size and resolution of the monitor. Most 10pt fonts are quite large enough for me on my 19 inch monitor at 1280 X 1024. I actually find larger fonts can make source code harder to read.

ProFont has been my favorite for years: http://www.tobias-jung.de/seekingprofont/