Monaco - the programmer's font

Turns out Monaco was designed by Susan Kare.

I've probably been using Monaco in Mac OS 7/8/9 and haven't realized it. I program mostly on Windows atm so I use Lucida Console. But yeah, I always use a monospaced font when dealing with source code.

For programming, I find ProFont to be more useful. Easier to distinguish (and therefore, debug) 1 from l, 0 from O or o, [ from { and ] from } to give the most obvious examples. It has been around since System 7 at least and has been updated to most font formats.

Just my 2¢

For programming, I find ProFont to be more useful. Easier to distinguish (and therefore, debug) 1 from l, 0 from O or o, [ from { and ] from } to give the most obvious examples.

Click to expand...

Monaco has good distinction between those characters, too.

One thing I find helpful for programming, beyond that, is narrow width. Courier is monospaced, but very wide. Monospaced fonts generally tend to seem wide, because they have to be big enough to legibly display characters with 3 and maybe 4 vertical strokes (M, W, @). If it can be more condensed, to fit more on screen, while still readable that's a plus.

to be honest I like the 40x25 bitmap font on MS DOS.

It helps with the O or 0 by putting a slash through the zero, Capital I has lines at the top and bottom, the 1 has lines at the top and the bottom, etc.

Any font that is easily distinguishable like that helps me a ton.

Here is a clone for modern computers http://www.dafont.com/perfect-dos-vga-437.font

(those fonts are freeware but the author accepts donations)

If you've never used it for coding, here are some Monaco specimens:

• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monaco1Sp.png
  
• http://www.identifont.com/show?1O2

I'd love an X bitmap version of this. (yes bitmap - something about them I like)