Fonts

[noisyturtle]

What's your go-to font, and what does that say about the kind of person you are?

My go-to font is Garamond, which says I'm creative and detail oriented but don't take myself too seriously.

[ComradeSniper]

Usually Arial. That probably says that I'm not very creative, which would be correct.

[mauri]

comic sa-

[hashbaz]

Consolas for coding.  Don't have a lot of other strong font opinions.

[Lastpilot]

What's your go-to font, and what does that say about the kind of person you are?

My go-to font is Garamond, which says I'm creative and detail oriented but don't take myself too seriously.

Haha yes. To me it feels like it says "Hey guys, I'm detail-oriented. I'm slightly different than Times New Roman, but intelligent people like me can tell the difference."

My go-to font is usually Century Gothic in either the regular or bold style. To me it just says modern and simple. It's subtle like a whisper.

[phetto]

I'm this kind of person

[vun]

I don't really have a go-to font, although Helvetica Neue is good to have for making half-assed design work look slightly less half-assed. Segoe UI is my go-to font if I'm modding a windows theme  that has an annoying font, or choosing fonts in software with the option to change font.

Although Sabon is probably the closest to a go-to font as I get, it's a nice and versatile serif font.
Idk what that would say about me tho.

[Pacifist]

I go for TNR

[rowdy]

I swap fonts about as often as I swap keyboards.

No particular favourites, but I tend to use the latest Microsoft fonts at work (Calibri, Cambria and so on), and Ubuntu for a lot of other things.

[inteli722]

Ubuntu is my preferred Sans font, and Times New Roman is my preferred Serif font. I also like Verdana.

[damorgue]

Eurostile LT is one of my favorites, but more importantly, always use an appropriate front for the context.

[swill]

courier
-------
Because monospace is awesome and its the only monospace font that is EVERYWHERE.

edit
----
And it says that I spend too much time in front of an editor that I care about column alignment.

[inteli722]

courier
-------
Because monospace is awesome and its the only monospace font that is EVERYWHERE.

edit
----
And it says that I spend too much time in front of an editor that I care about column alignment.

I too like monospace. All font should be monospace. That would make the world so much happier!

[ijprest]

I like Inconsolata for code editing... but it doesn't work in Visual Studio anymore (because it uses PostScript curves, and WPF doesn't support fonts w/PS curves, and Visual Studio switched to WPF a couple versions back).  It's open-source, so I tried my hand at generating a version that used OpenType curves, but the result ended up looking terrible and had weird/incorrect metrics.

So now I use Consolas.  It's pretty decent.

For general web-browsing and computer UI, I like Segoe UI.  It's really nice.

For printed work, I *love* Computer Modern.  Unfortunately, it was designed decades ago, and doesn't play well with modern software (with TTF/OTF versions mostly having been generated from bitmaps).  As a result, it tends to look terrible on the monitor at small-ish sizes.  But it still looks great when printed.

[noisyturtle]

Ah, and Distinctive is a good one. But you can only use it selectively because it's all caps, but man it looks classy.

[microsoft windows]

I LIKE TIMES NEW ROMAN AND COMIC SANS MS.

[aj-kun]

Calibri

[SpAmRaY]

I'm usually too lazy to switch from whatever default font. But I use Arial a lot when I do switch.

[daerid]

Inconsolata or Liberation Mono, because I love writing code all day long.

Pretty much hate most serif fonts I've come across, but favorite Sans font is probably either Helvetica Neue or Segoe UI SemiLight (depending on platform). If I'm on a linux box I prefer the Liberation family.

[xandr]

Inconsolata for anything monospaced - e.g. mainly code in Sublime Text

Delicious for pretty much everything else

[IvanIvanovich]

Segoe UI semilight, Consolas, Arial unicode, geosans light, M+2m light, Andale Sans, DejaVu mono, Myriad Pro... are probably the most used right now. I like to use lots of different fonts. I like sans fonts and prefer more modern styles.

[davkol]

I'm fine with DejaVu font family most of the time, there isn't anything really bad about it, although it's a bit too wide for my tastes. I sort of like the Ubuntu font as well, but its implementation of Czech diacritic sucks a lot.

For coding/terminal, it's probably Inconsolata. I'm not too picky though... as long as the font doesn't look like Courier (ugly).

I don't have any strong preference for longer writings either. Georgia is kinda cool, and you can't go wrong with TeX's Computer Modern.

All in all, I'd say it's Inconsolata and then the boring DejaVu family.

[rowdy]

Heh someone reminded me about Inconsolata, so I reinstalled it and now I use that all over the place.  It scales really well.

Nothing worse than having the top and bottom bars on E a different thickness.

[vasouv]

I've been using Consolas for coding but after seeing Inconsolata here, I think I might be changing to that. Seems nice.

edit: Nope, I downloaded and it's really ugly in 14 size in NetBeans. Has to be 28 to render nicely. Well I can't use 28 size for coding

[codyeatworld]

Been using Mozillas new typeface Fira. http://mozilla.github.io/Fira/

Its grown on me.

[daerid]

Been using Mozillas new typeface Fira. http://mozilla.github.io/Fira/

Its grown on me.

Now that is a nice font right thar

[MOZ]

I like square721 for titles and stuff, nice modern font.

[amasokin]

Helvetica. The best classic font imo.

[ijprest]

I've been using Consolas for coding but after seeing Inconsolata here, I think I might be changing to that. Seems nice.

edit: Nope, I downloaded and it's really ugly in 14 size in NetBeans. Has to be 28 to render nicely. Well I can't use 28 size for coding

Yeah, it sucks that Inconsolata doesn't work well in modern apps, at least on Windows.  It worked great in VS2008 and Notepad when I used it back-in-the-day.  But it looks like crap at small sizes on a modern machine with ClearType turned on.

(It looks like Inconsolata doesn't support ClearType at all... I wonder if it always looked like it does now and my standards are just higher, or if the renderer for non-ClearType fonts has become worse over time.)

[DamienG]

Envy Code R for programming.

Because I made it myself http://damieng.com/envy-code-r

[)amien

[oscillik]

Envy Code R for programming.

Because I made it myself http://damieng.com/envy-code-r

[)amien

I use Envy Code R for Hexchat in Windows!

thank you for making this font!

[DamienG]

I use Envy Code R for Hexchat in Windows!
thank you for making this font!

You're welcome!

[)amien

[acantha]

I use Envy Code R for Hexchat in Windows!
thank you for making this font!

You're welcome!

[)amien

NICE! i used envy for quite a while, before my add kicked in and i went looking for something new.

my current terminal font, on linux, is Tewi. For mac, i currently using 9pt Source Code Pro.

[jdcarpe]

I'll jump on the Consolas bandwagon. I really like it in XChat/YChat/Pchat.

[codyeatworld]

Been using Mozillas new typeface Fira. http://mozilla.github.io/Fira/

Its grown on me.

Now that is a nice font right thar

 

Envy Code R for programming.

Because I made it myself http://damieng.com/envy-code-r

[)amien

Wow thats a clean font, so easy to read.
Really nice job! I will have to give a try right now.

[rowdy]

Envy Code R for programming.

Because I made it myself http://damieng.com/envy-code-r

[)amien

Looks nice

But there is no difference between O and 0 - any chance you could put a slash through 0?

Edit: Forget that - the pic on the web site is out of date, the 0 does have a slash through it

[DamienG]

Edit: Forget that - the pic on the web site is out of date, the 0 does have a slash through it

Which pic are you referring to? It's always had a slash through it... If you mean the main sample of code the 0 is slashed (it's in green) the other characters are the letter O.

[)amien

[tipo33]

Helvetica. The best classic font imo.

likewise

[rowdy]

Edit: Forget that - the pic on the web site is out of date, the 0 does have a slash through it

Which pic are you referring to? It's always had a slash through it... If you mean the main sample of code the 0 is slashed (it's in green) the other characters are the letter O.

[)amien

Sorry, my bad, I'll post again when I've woken up and my eyes have cleared

[127001]

[ijprest]

Envy Code R for programming.

Because I made it myself http://damieng.com/envy-code-r

[)amien

Neat.  I've been testing it out in Sublime Text for a few hours.  The relative height of uppercase & lowercase characters was pretty jarring for the first little bit, but overall it seems like a quality font.

What software do you use to make the fonts, by the way?  I've played with FontForge a bit, but it seems awfully crashy on Windows.

[DamienG]

I purchased my own copy of FontLab... but it's $650.

[)amien

[ijprest]

Ouch... pricey.  I wish more companies offered "non-commercial" licenses for geeks like me to get proper tools.

[davkol]

Ouch... pricey.  I wish more companies offered "non-commercial" licenses for geeks like me to get proper tools.

Metafont

[ijprest]

Metafont

I haven't used Metafont, though I used Metapost a bit back when I was writing technical papers with TeX.

But to generate fonts that are usable on modern systems, you'd have to rasterize and then trace, no?  That's less than ideal.  To look good at small sizes on a modern system, I think you need more control over the OpenType features than Metafont can give you.  And the Type1/TTF examples of Computer Modern I've seen have been less than inspiring.

[DamienG]

If you own a Mac you use Glyphs for about half the price http://www.glyphsapp.com/ although it doesn't including hinting (less important these days anyway)

Both Glyphs and FontLab also have student pricing.

[)amien

[daerid]

Yeah, it sucks that Inconsolata doesn't work well in modern apps, at least on Windows.  It worked great in VS2008 and Notepad when I used it back-in-the-day.  But it looks like crap at small sizes on a modern machine with ClearType turned on.

(It looks like Inconsolata doesn't support ClearType at all... I wonder if it always looked like it does now and my standards are just higher, or if the renderer for non-ClearType fonts has become worse over time.)

I've had no problems with it on Windows, using the latest version from Google's font library (which has proper hinting)

[TacticalCoder]

Envy Code R for programming.

Because I made it myself

Excellent, I didn't try your font yet but I shall. I never went as far as making my own coding font but I did modify (for my own use only) one of the Proggy fonts. It was a long time ago and I don't even remember which software I used but I did re-create several versions (.ttf and whatever format was needed for X11 / Emacs etc.) and did carefully backup my mods/files and notes "somewhere".

Interestingly back in the days I did modify Proggy's lowercase "s" and uppercase "M" to use "less pixels" and they look like the "s" and "M" in your Envy font 
Your envy font reminds me in some way of something but I can't really tell what: probably some old (and great!) font in whatever text/code editor on the Atari ST.

As of now I'm mostly using the Terminus font with Emacs but, damn, after reading this thread I now want to customize it!

[ijprest]

Yeah, it sucks that Inconsolata doesn't work well in modern apps, at least on Windows.  It worked great in VS2008 and Notepad when I used it back-in-the-day.  But it looks like crap at small sizes on a modern machine with ClearType turned on.

(It looks like Inconsolata doesn't support ClearType at all... I wonder if it always looked like it does now and my standards are just higher, or if the renderer for non-ClearType fonts has become worse over time.)

I've had no problems with it on Windows, using the latest version from Google's font library (which has proper hinting)

Awesome! 

I was using the OTF downloaded from the creator's site, and it was anti-aliased, but not "ClearTyped".  When I first went to Google Fonts, I saw the same thing, but then I realized it was using my locally installed copy.  After uninstalling the font, the Google Fonts version was definitely ClearTyped.

So I downloaded the .woff file and ran it through a WOFF-to-TTF converter.  I've now got that TTF version installed, and it's getting ClearTyped in Sublime Text and Visual Studio!  Yay!

I think the "no-ClearType" problem (which affects other fonts as well... e.g., Adobe's Source Code Pro) has something to do with the font having PostScript-outlines vs. having TrueType outlines.  Any font I've seen that uses PostScript outlines doesn't get ClearType applied.  The original Inconsolata OTF file uses PostScript outlines... the TTF that I generated from the WOFF file has TrueType outlines.

[Altis]

Envy Code R for programming.

Because I made it myself http://damieng.com/envy-code-r

[)amien

Sorry to dig up a slightly dated thread.

Just wanted to add a +1 for Envy Code R. I have been using it for some programming lately and it's very nice. Thank you and well done, Damien!

I've also been using Sergio UI a bit lately for some written text.

Any new favorites to add to the list?