in Search

Do you Twitter? Follow us @CodeBetter

Raymond Lewallen

Framework Design, Agile Coach, President Oklahoma City Developers Group, Microsoft MVP C#, TDD, Continuous Integration, Patterns and Practices, Domain Driven Design, Speaker, VB.Net, C# and Sql Server

Trying out a new programming font.

I stumbled across this font over the weekend – Dina. From just looking at it, I kinda liked it so I installed it and am using it for now at 10pt on my 1600 x 1200 display. I was using Lucida Console at 11pt, which has been my choice programming font for many years. The Dina font is much thinner and I do wish it had an 11pt available, but so far I’m liking it. By the end of the week, I’m not so sure the thin and small lines of the font are going to agree with my eyes, but that remains to be seen.

I’ve never been one to mess around much with what already works, and Lucida Console has worked well for me over the years, leaving my eyes in a state at the end of the day where they don’t feel strained and causing me headaches. It also has been a great font to use for when I’m giving presentations. Very readable on a projector. I’m curious to test out this Dina font in the same manner. I have a feeling its not going to mesh as well with projection upon a large screen because of the thin lines. Every once in awhile you just to test the waters and try out a new flavor. You never know until you try, right? Unless, of course, you readers have any bits of advice as to your font preferences and wish to save me time and possible eye strain and headaches caused by my sudden urge to experiment.

Has anybody else tried this Dina font? Which fonts are you using for your IDEs and notepads out there?

Published Aug 07 2006, 08:43 AM by Raymond Lewallen

Filed under: .Net Development, Generalities

Comments

KG2V said:

Call me really old fashioned, but I still use Fixedsys!!

# August 7, 2006 10:11 AM

Scott said:

I'm rockin Consolas nowadays, Dina looks a little too thin to me.

# August 7, 2006 10:19 AM

Scott Schecter said:

Consolas, I absolutely love it. Previous to that I had been using Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.

# August 7, 2006 10:23 AM

Marc said:

Monospaced fonts are sooo last century.

I'm using Verdana or Tahoma whenever possible. Better readability, less horizontal scrolling with long identifier names.

Some argue that proportional fonts are bad when indenting texts, but I still have to find a convincing example where I need more than some start-of-line indentation - or do you guys waste your time with lining up end-of-line comments or boxes made of '*' characters?

# August 7, 2006 10:48 AM

Cos said:

I haven't played with a lot of fonts in VS, but I have to say, I like this one.

# August 7, 2006 11:13 AM

Tomas Restrepo said:

If you're going to look for a new monospaced fonts, make sure you use a TrueType or OpenType font that scales, those old bitmap fonts are a pain in the neck.

As others have said, both consolas and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono are very, very usable and won't tire your eyes as much. The only downside of consolas (or pretty much any other modern font) is that it really requires ClearType to be really usable; it looks like crap if you're forced to use it over an RDP connection, for example.

# August 7, 2006 11:19 AM

Jens Schaller said:

I think, that you should give Verdana 8pt a try. No, it isn't monospaced, but IMHO the times where monospaced fonts were important are over. ;)

# August 7, 2006 12:09 PM

JP Lopes said:

I tried Dina, but I kept using Andale Mono 8pt.

# August 7, 2006 12:13 PM

Ram said:

Try using new Microsoft Consolas. Its a great font and much nicer to look than Dina.

# August 7, 2006 2:17 PM

macbirdie said:

Dina? Yuck? Consolas is definetely the way to go. :)

# August 7, 2006 2:34 PM

Rob said:

Consolas is da bomb! No turning back.

# August 7, 2006 3:08 PM

Eric said:

Amateurs. I code in Windings. Webdings for ASP.NET apps.

# August 7, 2006 8:47 PM

todd brooks said:

I've used Monotype's Arial Monospaced for SAP for years. It has the width of Dina but allows me to get an extra SIX lines of source per screen using the same font size.

# August 7, 2006 9:06 PM

Damien Guard said:

Consolas has a few issues like an ugly as hell lower case g.

Keith Devens has a list of programming fonts to try at http://keithdevens.com/wiki/ProgrammerFonts

[)amien

# August 7, 2006 9:14 PM

Scott said:

Also rockin the consolas. Everywhere. I mean everywhere. IDE, Notepad, MSN, I even replaced my World of Warcraft game fonts with it.

I tried out Dina briefly...too skinny.

# August 7, 2006 9:27 PM

Peter's Gekko said:

A comment by Eric on Raymonds font post was so hilarious, I just had to give it a try.&nbsp; My choice...

# August 8, 2006 4:04 PM

Robert said:

I really like Dina. Like you, I previously used Lucinda Console, but a few months ago I decided to switch to Dina. I really like it!

# August 9, 2006 6:10 PM

Adam Machanic said:

I've been using ProFont for the last three or four years, but it is a bitmap (at least, the version I have; I'll have to check if they have a TT one) and so it is very annoying when I want to scale up (for which I use Lucida). But at 11 point, it's awesome! I'll check out Dina, though--thanks for the tip! The Dina Square looks pretty nice to me.

# August 16, 2006 3:06 PM

Grant said:

I've had problems measuring in pixels monospaced truetype text in C#. With monospaced fonts, the width of a single character remains constant no matter what characters are in a string. But the width of the entire string is given in floating point and contains some "spacing" pads at the beginning and end.

Spacing is consistent once it is put up on the screen but the width of a string is not. Have not been able to figure out why or how to translate.

Take a font with a width of 10 pixels. All characters have a width of 10 pixels on the screen. If I measure a 1-character string, it is 16.76 (or like that). A 10-char string is 104.67, a 100-char string is 970.45, a 1000-char string is 9450.6 etc.

Anyone figure this out already?

# October 9, 2006 7:09 AM

GeeKBoY said:

There is only one: Fixedsys

Dina, too thin.

Consolas, bad g, bad ;, too thin, works only on cooltype.

Verdana, not monospace.

For serious programming only bitmap monospace fonts work.

# December 20, 2006 9:43 AM

Name (required)

Your URL (optional)

Comments (required)

Remember Me?

Enter the numbers above:

Add

About Raymond Lewallen

Working primarily in the public sector during his career, Raymond has designed and built several high profile enterprise level applications for all levels of the government. Raymond now works as a solutions architect for EMC. Raymond is an agile coach, Microsoft MVP C# and also president of the Oklahoma City Developers Group and Oklahoma Agile Developers Group. Raymond spends a lot of his time learning and teaching such things as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Design Patterns and Extreme Programming practices and principles, to name a few. Raymond is also an advocate of Alt.Net. Raymond is primarily a framework guy, so don't ask him anything about UI :)

About Me

Raymond Lewallen

Trying out a new programming font.

Comments

KG2V said:

Scott said:

Scott Schecter said:

Marc said:

Cos said:

Tomas Restrepo said:

Jens Schaller said:

JP Lopes said:

Ram said:

macbirdie said:

Rob said:

Eric said:

todd brooks said:

Damien Guard said:

Scott said:

Peter's Gekko said:

Robert said:

Adam Machanic said:

Grant said:

GeeKBoY said:

Leave a Comment

About Raymond Lewallen

This Blog

Syndication

Recent Posts

Tags

News

MVP

Archives