On Wednesday, 16 December 2015 at 21:05:27 UTC, Andrei
Alexandrescu wrote:
I was looking at
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/1169
and that bold sans serif proportional text for the code is
just... well let's say it's time to replace it.
What would be a good code font to use for those?
Thanks,
Andrei
Let's stay away from web fonts.
Rationale:
Different text rendering algorithms will render the same text and
font file in different ways. A font may look nice on one
platform, but pretty bad on another.
The default fonts (i.e. monospace) are generally set to something
that will look fine on that system. Other fonts bundled with the
OS are also likely to look good. Using a custom font may thus
make the text less readable on some platforms (plus the downsides
already mentioned in this thread).
I am not completely opposed to the idea of using a web font, on
the condition that it is tested and does not lead to a downgrade
of usability on any of the major platforms, but I don't think the
downsides are worth it.
Looking at what other people are doing (and have much more
resources to think about such things):
Microsoft (MSDN): Consolas,Courier,monospace
Apple: Menlo,monospace
Android: Consolas,"Liberation Mono",Menlo,Courier,monospace
Go: Menlo,monospace
Java: monospace
Python: Consolas,"Lucida Console","Liberation Mono","DejaVu Sans
Mono","Bitstream Vera Sans Mono","Courier
New",monospace,sans-serif
It seems that all of the above are fonts that are likely to be
already installed on users' systems.
