It's been a struggle but finally after countless hours here it is, the next release of my Envy Code R monospaced (fixed-width) font designed for programmers.
Many glyphs have been redrawn since preview #6 including braces, lower-case y, 6 & 9, ampersand, dollar-sign, hash etc. One pixel was removed vertically height to make the box drawing balanced and allow more lines per screen.
These new box-drawing, shading and symbols make Envy Code R a great font for the command-prompt (Consolas and Lucida Console lack box-drawing completely). To use them you will need to run the included registry file and reboot to operate correctly from a command prompt's properties dialog.
This typeface contains over 550 glyphs providing full complements for DOS, Windows and Mac versions of the US, Western, Central Europe, Turkish, Baltic, Icelandic and Nordic code-pages. This hits several Unicode ranges including Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended A & B, Box Drawing, Block Elements, Letterlike Symbols, Number Forms, Arrows... although not all of these ranges are complete yet.
As well as regular and bold variants this version includes a full italic version too and the obligatory italic-as-bold hack to get italic syntax highlighting in Visual Studio as shown here in my favourite 10 point with my Humane theme.
And for those of you that like the font a little larger it now looks good and the odd sizing issues are all gone!
Okay, enough with the teasing, you've waited far too long...
Download Envy Code R Preview #7.2 (TrueType) (169 KB)
How does Envy Code R look with your favourite scheme and IDE? Show the world with a screenshot on your blog (linking here, thanks!)
[)amien
Great! Nice work! Thank you! :)
Hello,
Thanks for the new preview.
Now if only I could use greek as well.
I am really willing to help if you intend to add full greek support.
Regards,
Nick
Thanks for the offer Nikos, once I get back working on this font after a little break Greek characters are on my list to do and I'll be sending test versions your way.
[)amien
I really like your font and I installed it in VS straightaway. Could you provide us with the RGB values for your color scheme as well?
If you click where it says "Humane theme" you will be taken to a download page where you can get the complete theme ready to Import Settings... into Visual Studio :)
[)amien
"Envy Code R" has become my second favorite monospace font. Right after Monaco which sucks on Linux, at least with certain applications.
Now that this version works fine with KDE (kate,kwrite,etc), GNOME (gedit,anjuta,scite) and Eclipse, it might just become my overall favorite ;-).
I liked the curly brackets in previous versions better, though. And some symbols could be bigger in my opinion, like + and *.
Thanks a lot, you made my everyday coding much more enjoyable!
Hi,
Nice font. I'm still going to use Lucida Console though.
I use EditPadPro and came to this page via (http://www.micro-isv.asia/2008/05/great-programming-font-updated/).
In EPP, Lucida Console 8pt gives me 72 lines to a screen.
Envy Code R 8pt gives me 56.
Blogged: http://untidy.net/blog/2008/05/28/damien-guards-envy-code-r-font-updated/
Hey fella - I like the look. Folks who care about this sort of thing may also be interested in the languishing Ning community I setup,
http://idehotornot.ning.com
Put up a screenshot of your sexy ide and details - I've used it to get ideas to make my work environment easier and nicer.
thanks for the hard work on Envy!
I prefer the VS version, even though I don't use VS (SlickEdit on xp); the lighter weight is easier. And the { looks better. But there is one oddity: the ; and { come out in italic on SE (there may be others, just those I've seen). I posted on the SE internal forum; their dev said this:
SlickEdit does not choose which glyph to display. SlickEdit lets the OS figure this out. Most of the time, the output of ExtTextOutA is the same as ExtTextOutW but not always.
I've no idea what that means, yet. Other windoze programs don't make italic ; { . Can this be changed, or is it an artifact of VS?
@robert: The only difference in the VS version is that the "bold" font is actually an italic to get round limitations in the Visual Studio syntax highlighter.
It is otherwise identical.
I would imagine SlickEdit render ; and { in bold using your syntax highlighting scheme? They would then come out as italic using the VS font - that's what it does.
@richard: The reason for this is that Envy Code R is taller to allow for the accented characters. It's possible I'll gen a additional version in v0.8 that is pure ASCII + a few symbols and can therefore have tighter vertical spacing.
[)amien
@Damien: And that is the case. That I can fix.
Hey Damien,
Thank you so much for this font. I was using comic sans before this, and this is much easier on the eyes.
@cjwj: Erm, are you serious? Sulphuric acid is easier on the eyes than comic sans!
[)amien
Thank for all your work on this, I already used this in eric4 for python programming and in SSMS2005. Happily, the new verison is even better!
Great font. Shame about the curly braces. The older, not-so-curly flavour was much, much better.
Thanks Damien!
You are saving my eyes!
Can i give back to you without being in donations ? Amazon wishlist ?
I am really thankful to your work.
:)
Hey Damien:
Thanks, a Lot, I mean, huge , big thanks
I was looking for a monospaced font and I can'not install microsoft's consola font
so, I keep searching and I found this website,
I need to re design some reports and this font is the best so far
for my purposes.
I live in Mexico so I apologize for my bad english.
Thanks again.
crying, you've saved my life :P
@ruivaldo: The donation is to help recover the $699 I spent on the FontLab software I now use to get such fine results and not actually my time and effort.
Thanks for the offer of a gift but I'm keeping my possession count to a minimum while I move between three countries this year.
[)amien
Hi.
Every time I try to install this on windows Vista, it throws up almost random errors. Per-file, these errors show up at least 10 times per file, probably more.
img209.imageshack.us/img209/5043/shot1hn4.jpg
That's an example of the error messages that are popping up for me. It's always just random characters and nothing I do seems to fix it.
Ehh, nevermind that. A simple restart fixed it. I'm not use to coding in such a thing font, but it seems nice. I'll reply with my thoughts of it after some more extensive testing.
Did you manage to recover the $$ already? Could you give us a running total? That might help some of us put you over.
@Dimension: Lol, I wish... so far it's at $20.
[)amien
For those of us who won't touch PayPal with a barge pole, is there some other avenue? I am eager to, but...
Meh, I've taken the donate link off.
If you like it, blog about it with a screenshot :)
[)amien
Very nice, definitely gonna give this a spin!
I tried this with a font size of 8, it is was a little hard on the eye. Upped the font size to 10, and it does look very nice!
For anyone wanting to try it out in an xterm, sling the .ttf files into your font directory (/usr/share/fonts/ or similar), then launch a new xterm with
xterm -fa 'Envy Code R:style=Regular' -fs 10
Definitely the best Ive seen so far. 10 years ago I made my own raster font that went through 3 versions, named AUltrafontII it ended up being the best investment I've ever made of my time, since its been the font I use for all my coding. Is too bad some editors won't take a raster font, which is why I search - and have always been disappointed, till now. Again, very nice job.
mrobbinsassoc.com/aultrafontii.jpg would be a comparison between the two, along with some tips you might consider in case you do another version.
It has only one pt size which approximates 8pt on Envy, and after you look at it just remember I been using it for 10 years and I aint blind yet!
OMG YOU CAN DRAW BOXES!!
*builds an ASCII fort*
I'm now using Envy in Netbeans on OS X (with antialiasing *off*, thankyouverymuch!). Looks great.
I agree that the braces were much better in v6. They're way too squiggly for my tastes in v7, but it's a small price to pay. :-)
Hey just wanted to send a thanks out to Damien for makeing a killer font.
Great font, started using it today and I am converted (Courier New is UUURGLY). Any chance you could slash the zero for us? The 0 and O are really close.
Damien, my complements to a well-crafted font. I loaded it using Suitcase, set Visual Studio to use it - and it's my favorite now! I do like the enhanced braces - they now stand out more clearly as distinct from parentheses so I expect I'll be making less of THOSE errors. Thanks.
It would be a huge help for me if your font had the Cyrillic Unicode characters so that I could comment my code for my Russian readers. If you have plans to implement those and would like some help with it, please let me know.
appreciatively,
James Hurst
I love this font, it is really legible, beautifully crafted, now it looks great not only at 10 pt, but also at 9 and 11 pt (even with the freetype's autohinter on Linux). I reluctantly switched from Terminus, and so far I'm happy with it. I love it's crispness and clarity and I wish the bold version would eventualy match that over time. Thanks for a really great font.
Once you have extracted the files drag all the TTF files to Control Panel or if you are using Vista, right-click and choose Install from the context menu.
The registry file is only required if you wish to use them for your command prompt and are not necessary for just using within text editors/IDE's.
[)amien
Absolutely fantastic font. Great work!
Hello,
Thanks for this nice font (and the nice Humane theme :) ). I had a small note while using it today. I was writing code like this:
myString.Split('|');
In italic (as per the Humane theme), the '|' (or operator) character is not very clear, especially when it's alone. I actually got confused today whether it was the or operator or a forward slash.
I might suggest putting the old vertical space in this character, so that it appears as two vertical bars above each other. This would remove the confusion. But of course, this is just a suggestion. You may well have a better idea.
Thank you.
@Hosam: The bar with a gap is actually a different glyph/character altogether so I don't think that's an option.
The alternative might be to reduce the slant of the | so that it can not be mistaken for a backslash or to make it the same as the version in the regular style.
[)amien
Thanks for your reply Damien. I'm not sure about reducing the slant, since I think it would look odd in strings like "param1|param2". But hey, you're the fonts guy, and you certainly know better than me. :)
I just noticed another thing by the way. The small 'f' character in italics looks to have a slightly larger angle than other characters such as 'i' and 'l'. In a comment, the word "fill" appears very nice, with the 'i', 'l' and 'l' all having the same angle. But the 'f' seems to have a slightly larger angle.
I am using font size 12 by the way.
And last but not least, thanks a lot for your efforts! :)
I just found this font and almost switched from Consolas. Where Envy differs from Pragmata, I almost always prefer your choices. They seem to show the influence of Terminus. But those curly braces do freaky things at small point sizes. My screen looks like it's littered with dead larvae. If you are bent on keeping the braces that way, could you provide a version with ones like in Pragmata?
Cheers
Looks like a nice fixed-width typeface. I'm a big fan of Bitstream Vera Sans Mono (and DejaVu Sans Mono) which I use on my Mac. Unfortunately, Windows handles the TTF terribly, or it was poorly engineered for Windows, so I'll look at this as a potential Courier New replacement at the office.
Hey there. I'm also a big fan of Bitstream Vera Sans, but I've been giving this a go to see if I can get used to it.
Thing I notice immediately that I'm not so much a fan of:
* This font has an awful lot of whitespace between characters. I've set this as my system monospace font, and so it's come up as my email font (I don't do HTML mail.) It makes things look... Very mechanical. So there's a real-world usage I bet you didn't anticipate. :-P
* The ampersand looks shocking. It's just a lopsided squiggle even at higher resolutions. Ampersands are meant to be beautiful. ^_^ Check the Wikipedia page for some inspiration, and go nuts.
* This font is an odd size. I use 10pt fonts on my desktop, but I need to bump yours up to 11 before it looks the right size. This isn't so much an issue as it is feedback for feedback's sake. :-P
Other than that, keep up the work. After two days use, it's definitely growing on me. It feels a lot like Silkscreen would if it were opentyped. >_>
@ash: I actually use this for my email, text editors and is set to my fixed width font in my browsers on OS X and Windows in the interests of dogfooding ;-)
It does look mechanical yes, the basic idea behind the font was that 10 point on Windows would look like a pixel font but with smooth corners hence this style.
There is a lot of vertical whitespace because it supports the full set of ascenders and descenders used in various languages. I will likely produce a more compact ASCII-only version at some point for those that don't need the languages but want more lines per inch.
What operating system/tools are you using? It is optimised for 10 point on Windows but the Mac has a different DPI so needs around 13 to look best.
[)amien
Very nice VS Theme. I use it at work and home. Also cool that it works in VS2005 and VS2008. The only thing that annoys me is how some of the letters looks when italics (v is the one that really stands out). Might have to remove the italics :-).
First of all, thanks for your hard work.
Envy Code R looks great on Windows, and pretty good on Ubuntu if you follow Tomas Restrepo's advice at http://www.winterdom.com/weblog/2008/08/18/ImprovingFontRenderingInUbuntu.aspx.
But I find it disappointingly fuzzy on Macs, whereas I find DejaVu Sans Mono to be much more consistent across the three platforms and
I put up a set of screenshots at http://flickr.com/photos/george_v_reilly/sets/72157606825244117/detail/
BTW, shouldn't Envy Code R show up in the Fixed Width section of the Mac Font Chooser dialog?
Great bunch of screenshots George, thanks.
What Fixed Width section of the Font Chooser are you referring to? Can you post a screenshot as I have nothing like that on mine.
The guys behind DejaVu are probably professional font designers who understand what they are doing with hinting and not an amateur working on his first ever scalable font somewhat in the dark hence why it looks more consistent ;-)
[)amien
The DejaVu fonts are derived from the Bitstream Vera fonts, so, yeah, it was drawn by professionals.
The Font Chooser can be accessed in TextEdit from Format > Fonts > Show Fonts. Click Fixed Width in the Collections column.
(Later)
I used TTX, http://www.letterror.com/code/ttx/index.html, to dump Envy and Courier New. Both of them have isFixedPitch=1. I can't find any other likely setting.
I opened Font Book and dropped Envy Code R onto the Fixed Width collection, and now I see it in the Font Chooser dialog in TextEdit and Vim.
I have no idea if the system should automatically add fixed-pitch fonts to the Fixed Width collection, though one would hope so.
A screenshot of the Font Chooser dialog -after- I dropped Envy Code R onto the Fixed Width collection in the Font Book app: http://flickr.com/photos/george_v_reilly/2780072663/
In /Library/Fonts/Microsoft, I have Consolas, Lucida Console, and Lucida Sans Typewriter (installed, I believe, by Microsoft Entourage 2008). I don't see any of those fonts in the Fixed Width collection either.
The FontBook collections are all manually maintained as far as I know.
I wrote in my Snow Leopard wish-list that they'd include the font equivalent of smart playlists so you could have effectively queryied collections such as Fixed Width/Monospaced that would scan for that flag :)
[)amien
I found your font yesterday and downloaded it. Looks good! On request/suggestion, as someone else previously posted, would be to perhaps to consider adding a slash or dot to the zero. The O (oh) and 0 (zero) look a lot a like. Any chance on having a version or update with such a feature added to the zero?
It has slashed zeroes as shown in both the screenshots (next to the 1 in the symbol table, the green 0 in the for loop in the code sample).
[)amien
The best programming font I've ever seen, on size 10.
I really prefer to use size 8, but I liked this font so much I switched to 10.
The problems with size 8:
- {} character is really weird.
- * character looks like something else ;)
Since I code in C++ in linux, please keep in mind this is true for ubuntu linux with 96 points and in the Eclipse Ganymede editor.
Just trying to help, thanks a lot for your work on this font. Will keep using it!
It matches very well with Dotum hangul font in my PuTTY customized version.
Here's the screenshot: http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/2504/dputtyfontexamplept2.png
By the way, gray characters seem a little bit greenish with ClearType on. I think you can see this on your preview gif image. I'm not sure this problem could be avoided, but if possible, I hope you could fix it. :)
Hi Demien,
Thank you for this great font!
Carlos
The Previews are really looking nice. Will have a try and see how it`ll be in the workflow. Anyway, thanks for this nice amount of work.
Damien,
Do you have a VS 2008 version of the Humane Studio settings?
Or perhaps am I doing something wrong, because I import the settings from your zip, my IDE doesn't change it's fonts and colors.
I noticed in the file that the version was "8.0"
I tried changing it to "9.0", but no success.
Thanks for any thoughts,
I've been trying to adopt Envy R all the way through. Here's a question however:
When I set it as my console's font (Vista) the font always shows italic... what's the deal? Anyone else having the same issue?
Thanks for the great ttf!
There is a bug in the Command Prompt application that causes it to take the first style it finds with the matching name.
The solution is to remove Envy Code R and add the regular versions first. Then add the bold and italics. This should cause the fonts to be enumerated in the right order - this trick should also work for using Courier as the Console font.
[)amien
Thanks for the heads up Damien... I ended up using the VS version which seems to work a-ok as well ;-)
HI..Thanks for your Greate font File
Im using this font good well...
But..There is one disadvantage.
I usually program by 'MS-SQL 2000' (Query Analyzer)
and i applyed it but... it cound not be seen Character 'd'
'd' is can be seen but this is seems to be faint (not correctly)
Please Fix this error (disadvantage...)
Thanks very much for reading...
ah.... it's my mistake...
Im using font..'Envy Code R VS'
Hi. Great font! I prefer it over Consolas for coding in VS. Very clear and complete.
Good work.
Thanks.
Great font. This is my new favorite. Looks good at many different sizes. Im using it all over the place, console, npp, visual studio. Thanks so much.
I see the font is marked as "Free to use but redistribution prohibited."
Unfortunately that will make it unavailable to all the users that do not spend their time combing the internet for new fonts and rely on third parties to select a font bundle for them.
Could you take a look at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal_considerations_for_fonts
and check if the OFL or the GPL with font exception is not suitable for your needs?
This is not to fork the font, or claim it's not yours, or make a boatload of money with "free" font cds, just to make it possible to distribute it with Linux systems or on the OLPC.
The font will very likely be open licensed once it reaches the 1.0 release but I didn't want multiple versions hosted or distributed while the font is still very much a work in progress. This would give support issues and also people with older versions would be put off by the quality and perhaps not try newer versions. (This problem already exists to some extent because of the screen-shots of older versions currently online).
Also, given the specialist nature of monospaced fonts, I'm sure people who are interested in changing their programming font will come across is soon enough via the search engines until that time.
[)amien
I've been happily using Envy Code R (@ 13pt) for a while now, but recently noticed that italics are causing me fits. NetBeans started using bold italics for the names of static methods, and now the show up as a mess of unicode symbols.
If I switch to just italics, it's still garbled. Bold works ducky.
Seems to be just NetBeans (or perhaps Java), as I can do bold italics in Word 2003 just fine.
This is on Windows (obviously).
Consolas and DejaVu Mono Sans work fine in NetBeans.
I think you overstate the risk of opening the license now, as distributors are pretty good at propagating updates (better at least than me at answering replies in blogs:)). Also they have bug trackers so problems and fixes can be traced.
But that's your choice as font designer and anyone honest will respect it.
Thank you for considering open licensing!
Looks very nice. Been trying to find something better for Zend on SUSE for PHP/MySQL work.
Noticed a small error in the readme. Figured I'd point it out.
Where it says "There are three variants including in the archive"..
it should be includ*ed*, not "ing".
Excellent!
My only suggestion would be bolder punctuation. Maybe my eyes are failing, but I sometimes have problems distinguishing '.' from ',' and ':' from ';' . Also a bolder '!' is in keeping with the connotations of that character.
Punctuation is a serious matter in code -- it deserves emphasis.
Great work!
I really, really like this font, a lot. I was using Terminus and Droid Sans Mono, but I had to switch. It has this wonderful ancient, mystic-like quality that makes my code look godly. I can't wait for you to finish, although I don't know how much more you could do.
Now if you could act like a real geek and not put spaces in filenames......
@Paul DOS and CP/M are gone, let em go and embrace proper filenames ;-)
[)amien
Hey, I just tried out Envy Code R on my Mac in X Code and looks sadly fuzzy (or heavy or something..). Check out the screen shot at http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroon/3136212284/sizes/o/
That's Envy Code R, Regular, 13 via X Code settings. To install the fonts I just double clicked the ttf files and clicked Install Font in the dialog that popped up. And to my knowledge I have changed any of the font rendering settings on this Mac or in X Code.
The screen shot from VS looks great. I'll have to give this another shot on my PC. Look forward to solid Mac support =]
Hi,
Just to let you know that your font, at size 13 in IntelliJ IDEA 8.0 on OS X 10.5 is perfect - coming from Windows to OSX, the fuzzy fonts haven driven me perpetually nuts, and Envy Code R is the clearest font I've used, having discarded all my previous favourites - the fuzziness is inherently distracting.
So thank you very much. :)
Thank you for your working.
this is my vs style.
http://netframework.wik.is/User:Admin/Visual_Studio_Setting
Thank you Damien. I love Envy Code R and use it for my shell and Eclipse, both at home and work!
With antialiased on, IMHO, Consolas is better in Idea 8.0.1 in Windows, but Consolas is worse than Bitstream in Jaunty. I'll try this font in Jaunty tonight.
Awesome font, Damien!!! I'm using it everywhere I can. The only one issue I have is that in VS2005 and VS2008 the underscore _ isn't visible on the bold version of the font. It looks like a regular whitespace. I'm using the values / settings from the Humane theme.
Hi Damien,
wont go on and on about the great font... been using it for a while now. However, quick question... any progress on the Greek char support?
Thanks again
Absolutely fabulous!!!! Thank you for your hard work on this font. It has so changed my coding experience. I have use Lucinda Console for years as it is far easier to read, but yours takes the cake. I also appreciate the color schemes and links for Visual Studio and from there SQL Server Management Studio. I code all day long and my eyes hurt so much less without the constant white background. Your font has "infected" almost any program I have font control on, Firefox, Windows Environment, etc. It is great!!!!! Thank you again.
Damien, absolutely great font for VS. My favorite.
However, I liked small y and curved braces from 0.6 version. In 0.7 those look too curvy, not in that mechanical overall style. From 0.7 version, I like comma (it is more obvoius now).
Keep up the great work!
Was using Deja Vú but this blows it out of the water, awesome font thanks!
Brilliant! Thanks so much!
My new favorite at work and at home (essentially work with a liquor cabinet).
Fantastic font.
It's been a year now.
Any plan on finalizing the font ?
Thank you SO much for this font. It looks awesome in KDE's Konsole. Clearly legible even when smoothed. Great job!
Envy Code R is really great.
It looks very clear, smooth, easy to read at size 10. It is the first choice for my code. The only small issue I meet is that when using bold style at size 10, two chars "w" and "r" seem too close (in normal style, they look good).
Could you provide another Envy version that is more suitable for bold style?
Thanks for your awesome fonts!
Yo Deadly D
Slick font! £81 for Pragmata? Jog on, m8..
I'm currently using Envy in Windro$$ Vista / OpenOffice Writer - size 12, no Cleartype and Standard smoothing. And it looks teh shizz.
Two things: The bottom of the 't' sticks out too much past the top bar. This bugs me. And the bolds are way too bold - they clog up on the page. Shave a third off perhaps?
Take it easy, and well done
Henry
ps. Warlock Of Firetop Mountain on a ZX48k = a tiny taste of retro gaming bliss.
If you're thinking about open-sourcing your font, have you considered the Open Font License developed by SIL? http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=OFL has the details, and it's apparently been recommended, and used, by others as well (see http://openfontlibrary.org/wiki/Open_Font_License for example).
Disclaimer: I work for SIL, but not in the font department (I'm a programmer). This is my personal opinion, not my employer's.
Great font - it's filled a much felt need for a good monospaced font. I'm already using it all over and like it better than Consolas. Now that VS10 doesn't allow bitmapped fonts, I have had to discard them in favor of Envy Code R. Some suggestions to make it a better _programming_ font:
* Get rid of the grave ("back quote") glyph. It' typographically useless. Instead replace with an inverted opening quote.
* Raise underbars till they align with the baseline. Dropped underbars have outlived their original intent which was to underline on printers by backing up and printing out a series of underbars under previously typed out text. As separators in names, dropped underbars are visually jarring.
* Bigger operator glyphs (* + - % ^). I find the + especially small. You can turn to older math books for sizing inspiration for these glyphs. Also an asterisk is almost never used as a referring symbol (e.g., referring a footnote, etc.), so it should probably lowered from superscript height to that of other operator glyphs.
A far-out suggestion: a serif version?
Contact me for samples of (bitmapped) fonts that I really like for programming.
Cheers,
TG