Tuesday 4 November 2014

Monospaced and fixed width fonts for programming and terminal

The best of all font ever for console and programming is the fixed size used in X windows :

  • 6x13 -Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-SemiCondensed--13-120-75-75-C-60-ISO10646-1
Here is how I get it in my Ubuntu 14.04, following the greate article from pts.org  ( http://ptspts.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/how-to-enable-bitmap-fonts-on-ubuntu.html )


$ wget -q -O - http://pts-mini-gpl.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/fonts/fixedsc.tgz |
       (cd / && sudo tar xzv)
$ sudo rm -f /etc/fonts/conf.d/70-{yes,no,force}-bitmaps.conf
$ if test -f /etc/fonts/conf.avail/70-force-bitmaps.conf
  then sudo ln -s {../conf.avail,/etc/fonts/conf.d}/70-force-bitmaps.conf
  else sudo ln -s {../conf.avail,/etc/fonts/conf.d}/70-yes-bitmaps.conf
  fi
$ sudo rm -f /var/cache/fontconfig/*
$ rm -rf "$HOME/.fontconfig"
$ sudo fc-cache
$ fc-cache

Then I select FixedSc size 10 for all my x-terminal. This works great with low res screen, but become more difficult to read with high definition one. Then I choose INCONSOLATA font for these displays. This font works well in all size, hinting and sub-pixel order. Other font looks better but then you have to tune the font rendering and maybe reduce

$ sudo apt-get install fonts-inconsolata

See some other fonts here :



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