Journal: News & Comment

Fixed width

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People like me who've been using e-mail for a long time, as well as programmers and those who edit web page code, prefer working in a fixed-width (a.k.a. monospaced) font. There are many reasons, but unfortunately the field of genuinely good fixed-width fonts isn't that large.

Kaishaku has posted a page comparing various fixed-width fonts using the same text on a sample screen, including the upcoming Consolas for Windows Longhorn. All the samples are from Windows, so they don't include Mac examples such as the system-supplied Monaco, or Mishawaka or MPW. Given the chance, I'll use ProFont, but in some odd circumstances MPW works better in e-mail and for displaying the source code of web pages in browsers.

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