[Purdue-pm] what proramming fonts do you recommend?

[Mark Senn]

I'm writing a blog entry about fonts.  I'll show pictures of the font
along with pictures of other fonts to compare and contrast, etc.  I'm
only interested in information about free fonts.

Do you know of any fonts that are especially good for programming, or
especially bad fonts to contrast with the better fonts?

Following my signature (i.e., "-mark") is the message I sent to Purdue
Perl Mongers earlier about fonts.

-mark

To: Purdue Perl Mongers <purdue-pm at pm.org>
From: Mark Senn <mark at purdue.edu>
Subject: programming fonts
Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2019 13:09:22 -0400

Over the past ten years or so, I've evaluated probably around
20 fonts for programming and have used the following (one at a
time for months or years).

Inconsolata dz

Inconsolata g (liked dot in zero better)

Adobe Source Code Pro (the ell looks like this only curvier
-|
 |
 |_
It is hard to mistake it for a one.

IBM Plex Mono Regular.   I like ( { [ and ] } ) better thn Source Code
Pro's version of those glpyhs (an "A" can be represted by a hex number
41 in a computer, a glyph is the pictorial representation or symbol
for that character).  I don't like the ell in Source Code Pro.
It isn't ellish enough to suit me.
Ell, 1, and the pipe symbol (|) all  look different.
Parens, braces, and brackets all look different.
Has dotted zero that I like better than slashed zero.
Dotted zero and capital oh look different and dotted zero
looks different from an eight.
It's contemporary.
Comes in lots of styles and weights.
The LaTeX plex package supports it.
Plex has all the Unicode characters I'v tried using from Emacs.
It's open-source.

Mark Senn, Senior Software Engineer,
Engineering Computer Network, Purdue University



-mark