cabruen@athena.mit.edu (Charles Alan Bruen) (11/26/90)
Does anyone have a particulary favorite non-proportional postscript font they like. I need to include computer code inside documents and have found nothing to my satisfication as of yet. You help would be appreciated. -Charles Bruen Aero/Astro MIT cabruen@athena.mit.edu
clouds@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Kathy Strong) (11/26/90)
In article <1990Nov26.033449.15210@athena.mit.edu> cabruen@athena.mit.edu (Charles Alan Bruen) writes: > >Does anyone have a particulary favorite non-proportional postscript font >they like. I need to include computer code inside documents and have >found nothing to my satisfication as of yet. > Hardly surprising. Monospaced fonts are uniformly ugly. :-) If you're using Adobe fonts your choices are more or less limited to "typewriter fonts--Courier, Prestige Elite, and the like. Depending on just what kind of listings you're doing, though, you may not actually NEED monospaced fonts (e.g., unless you're doing tabular material, a proportional might do as well). In that case, may I recommend Glypha (a slab-serif) or American Typewriter? Both work well as a flag to the reader that "this is listing, not body copy" and both are nice-looking, readable faces. For something a little heavier, you could try Franklin Gothic (a sans serif). --Kathy -- ........................................................................... : Kathy Strong : "Try our Hubble-Rita: just one shot, : : (Clouds moving slowly) : and everything's blurry" : : clouds@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu : --El Arroyo : :..........................................................................:
henry@angel.Eng.Sun.COM (Henry McGilton) (11/27/90)
In article <40169@ut-emx.uucp>, clouds@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Kathy Strong) writes:
* Depending on just what kind of listings you're doing,
* though, you may not actually NEED monospaced fonts
* (e.g., unless you're doing tabular material, a
* proportional might do as well).
Seems that monospaced fonts and tabular material aren't really
that connected. Use a table layout package such as TBL to do
tabular layout.
* In that case, may I recommend Glypha (a slab-serif)
* or American Typewriter? Both work well as a flag to
* the reader that "this is listing, not body copy" and
* both are nice-looking, readable faces. For something a
* little heavier, you could try Franklin Gothic (a sans serif).
There are often problems with using a proportional font for
`computer voice'.
o One problem is the spaces are usually too thin.
Every few months, somebody types in one of the
examples in the PostScript Blue Book where there's
a one character string written as ( ) (open
parenthesis, space, close parenthesis). In the
Helvetica font they use for PostScript, the space
is too thin and the readers see it (and retype it)
as (). Then, when the program doesn't work, they
yell `Bugs In The Blue Book!'
o Another problem is that words like float and
file look really stupid when the formatter of
choice decides to inject ligatures instead of
leaving the words the way they were typed.
........ Henrygeoff@pmafire.inel.gov (Geoff Allen) (11/29/90)
Count me in as another supporter of monospaced fonts for code listings. No, they're not attractive, but the job of source listings isn't to be attractive. They're supposed to be *accurate*. Things like spaces are more improtant in some languages than others, but even in C, where white space is pretty inconsequential, most Mac programmers seem to use Monaco for their programming. Now, if I recall correctly, the originator of this thread was asking for a nice-looking monospaced font. I don't know that there is such a thing. I think about the best you can hope for is something clear, legible, and that says, ``Hey! This is computer code!'' From Font & Function, Prestige Elite looks a little too fancy (more like typewriter output than computer code), but Letter Gothic might have potential. -- Geoff Allen \ Computers are useless. uunet!pmafire!geoff \ They can only give you answers. geoff@pmafire.inel.gov \ -- Pablo Picasso
geoff@pmafire.inel.gov (Geoff Allen) (12/01/90)
I wrotes: >I think about the best you can hope for is something clear, >legible, and that says, ``Hey! This is computer code!'' From Font & >Function, Prestige Elite looks a little too fancy (more like typewriter >output than computer code), but Letter Gothic might have potential. I had another thought. Code listings should clearly distinguish between the numeral 0 zero and the letter O (oh). 1 (one) vs. l can be another gotcha. Zero and oh in letter Gothic seem to be almost identical. Oh well. Prestige Elite isn't much better. With all their billions of fonts, why hasn't Adobe some up with a good monospaced font with slashed zeros for source listings? -- Geoff Allen \ Computers are useless. uunet!pmafire!geoff \ They can only give you answers. geoff@pmafire.inel.gov \ -- Pablo Picasso