Inconsolata: Quality Free and Open Font for Programmers

by steven  []  -  10 replies

Inconsolata PreviewIf you spend a significant amount of time working with any type of scripting, code, or markup, then you’re probably looking at a monospace (fixed-width for each character) font.

The quality of these fonts varies, though the defaults that ship with Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Windows Vista are quite good. The Consolas font included with Vista is particularly good.

Fortunately, there is a quality free/open alternative. Raph Levien has developed a great programming font cleverly called Inconsolata. I have been using it as my primary terminal/coding/text font for several months and find it superior to anything else I’ve used.

Incosonata is freely available under the Open Font License. The OpenType version of Inconsolata will work on all major platforms. There is also a PFA version available.

Font geeks can download the Inconsolata FontForge source file and a PDF sample is available.

Here’s a quick screenshot of Inconsolata used in a simple PHP file on my desktop.

Replies to Steven Garrity’s post: Inconsolata: Quality Free and Open Font for Programmers
Nick B []
Love it. Thanks.
Willem []
wil@pliv.com
http://pliv.com/
On OSX, as the PHP screenshot illustrates, it's a wonderful font, but it doesn't play well with XP's Cleartype:

http://pliv.com/show/loose/inconsolata_code.png

The blur is quite extreme. I've never seen a font that ignores hinting this much.

Steven Garrity []
steven@actsofvolition.com
Willem, that PHP screenshot is actually from the terminal (Gnome Terminal) on Fedora 7 Linux.

You're right about the XP rendering. That is pretty blurry. At least it's open-source, so it might get better.

Jason []
Certainly an excellent font but it could stand for a little tweaking: 'a slashed zero and the position of the horizontal bar on the lower-case f dropped to stop the blurring at 9/10 points'. How handy that someone's done both things!

http://damieng.com/blog/2006/11/28/inconsolatadg-slashed-zeros

Garrett Murray []
garrett@maniacalrage.net
http://maniacalrage.net
Not too bad, but I still prefer Bistream. I've been using it for about a year and a half now and love it.

http://www.gnome.org/fonts/

Charles Pritchett []
http://charlesp.org
That's a nice font, I don't know how I'd deal without a slashed zero though. I've been using the Proggy series of fonts for a couple of years now and they've made using something like Courier all but impossible for me now.

http://www.proggyfonts.com/index.php?menu=download

I suppose it's more of a habit of what I'm used to looking at now more than anything else.

Sérgio Carvalho []
sergio.carvalho@co.blog.com
http://k.blog.com/
It's nice, but I still prefer my current font, ProggyClean:
http://www.proggyfonts.com/index.php?menu=download

You may want to take a look. It might not look so nice, but plays much better with small font sizes. It's very readable at 12pt with lots of info onscreen.

dan diemer []
danembraceddc@gmail.com
http://dandiemer.vox.com
"...thought the defaults..." should read "...though the defaults..."

sorry for the public correction.

TL []
I like Monaco for a programming font.
Mark Gibbins []
http://mark.kiidesign.com/inconsolata.html
I've started working on hinting Inconsolata for TrueType/ClearType. No more blurry pants.

Get it here: http://mark.kiidesign.com/inconsolata.html

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