Another problem is with line lengths. If you have a standard that limits lines to 100 chars (for example), that only makes sense with a monospace font. The practice of using tabs for indentation and everyone choosing their own tab size has the same problem.
It might be better if you could store files with long lines and have the IDE wrap them intelligently when it displays them. As far as I can tell Eclipse doesn't do that. Do any others? -- Tim On May 26, 3:07 am, Casper Bang <[email protected]> wrote: > I just find that monospace fonts cater better to "pattern recognition" > when scanning over chunks of code. Also, it's kind of annoying to move > the cursor up/down with the keyboard, without being able to rapidly > predict what column you'll end up on. Proportional font's also makes > it impossible to do rectangular selections i.e. mark all "public" > modifiers in a declaration block for deletion (perhaps not the best > example, but you get the idea). > > /Casper > > On May 26, 9:18 am, Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 10:49 PM, Russel Winder <[email protected]>wrote: > > > > On Wed, 2011-05-25 at 06:45 -0700, Chris Koerner wrote: > > > > Just readhttp://hivelogic.com/articles/top-10-programming-fonts/and > > > > I was curious what the Posse fans like to use. > > > > > (note terminus wasn't included in the list, sadly) > > > > Is it still the case that people are unshakeably committed to using > > > monospace fonts for programming? > > > > I use Ocean Sans MT for all my work whether it be letter writing or > > > code. Code is just another form of document which is used for reading > > > most of the time. So I use a proportional font on the grounds it is > > > easier to read document using proportional fonts than monospace ones. > > > > Whilst this response might seem a troll in many ways, I am genuinely > > > surprised that people just continue to use monospace fonts in an almost > > > "there is no other choice" sort of way -- though I admit monospace fonts > > > have improved dramatically over the years. > > > It's a fair question. > > > I am a bit conflicted because I see two sides to this coin: > > > - ASCII art (neatly aligning parameters, etc...) is usually discouraged > > because it goes to hell as soon as you refactor. From this perspective, > > using a proportional font shouldn't be a problem. > > > - Reading papers that use proportional fonts for code (looking at you, > > LaTeX) drives me nuts. It just feels... wrong. That's a pretty weak > > argument, I know. > > > So yes, maybe it's time to revisit this axiom and start playing with > > proportional fonts... > > > -- > > Cédric- Hide quoted text - > > - Show quoted text - -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
