Some of my older bitmap "pixel" font files are now available again, they are:
I also have about 20 pixel fonts from my Spectrum days that I am intending on bringing across to Windows FON format in the near future.
[)amien
Jeff "Coding Horror" Atwood published a nice round-up of coding fonts he's been looking at lately in Visual Studio with his own colour scheme.
For reasons best known to Jeff he went with 11 point this time (previously his scheme was published with 10 point) and used the older preview of Envy Code R neglecting to mention the italic-as-bold variant to get round the no-italics limitation of Visual Studio's highlighting syntax editor.
So here is the latest version, at the optimal 10 point utilising the italic variant and Jeff's own colour scheme modified to show comments in 'bold':
Personally I am using a tweaked version of Thomas Restrepo's dark theme at work that currently looks like:
[)amien
First a thank-you to all the people who have given me feedback on the preview #6 release of my Envy Code R font.
There were some reported problems which are now fixed:
I can understand the style choice, that was a simple oversight on my part, but why the Java renderer is attempting to use the bitmaps even in anti-aliased scenarios I just don't understand. The fact it doesn't like to render characters that are simply a flip of another one is also odd and while I have fixed it for ]}) by decomposing them there are many others which I have not. They are a real time-saver during the design phase and so I will leave the others as-is for now.
There are no design changes or new glyphs in this update but the next release should include more Greek characters and box-symbols (CP 437).
Download Envy Code R Preview #6.1 (TrueType) (124KB)
Damien
A newer version of Envy Code R is available.
The last few days have been frantic ones putting the final touches to the next release of the Envy Code R typeface as I bring it closer to my idea of the perfect coding font.
Many glyphs have been redrawn, curves improved and a many additional characters and symbols added bringing the number of glyphs to 461 - enough to cover common European and US code pages including Windows/ISO 1250 & 1252 as well as MacOS Roman and a few others.
There was some interest in a bold variant and so once that was done I felt the urge to make an italic one too:
Phew!
As a bonus I've created a variant that overcomes Visual Studio's aversion to italics by marking the italic font as bold. Choose 'Envy Code R VS' in the Font and Colors part of Visual Studio's Options and choose bold wherever you want italics.
Here's a sample at 10 point/ClearType with my own color scheme:
Yummy.
A few things to note:
Download Envy Code R Preview #6.1 (TrueType) (124KB)
Feel free to leave comments and suggestions here (or better yet blog about it!)
[)amien
Envy Code R has been updated since this post.
I have been experimenting with Envy Code R over the last few months - everything from creating a bold version to delta hinting with Visual TrueType with mixed results.
Part of the problem is that at larger sizes the odd shapes and over-emphasized curves that I drew to make the font look great at 10-point with ClearType on makes it look awkward at larger sizes.
Last weekend, I went back to the drawing board, literally, to try and improve on the shapes without impacting too much on the 10-point size ClearType version. The result is as follows;
And for comparison, the old version:
Let me know your thoughts in the comments, even if it's just to say your prefer PR6, Consolas or something else. Be sure to mention what size and whether you have ClearType on (or if you are using a Mac).
[)amien
I came across a posting by Thomas Restrepo about a theme for Vim he likes called Wombat and how it wouldn't be worth porting to Visual Studio as it doesn't support italic syntax highlighting - as we all know.
This got me thinking and I was able to port it with italics although the process is a bit of a hack.
If I can figure out a way of making this hack re-distributable without infringing on copyrights I'll follow this one up.
In the meantime here's a screen-shot of it in action using Consolas.
I can't stand using vim for .NET - I've got better things to do than commit the entire .NET Framework to memory. I remember watching a WPF screen-cast where the guy was using "his trusty editor" (vim or emacs - I forget ;-) and going on about the great keyboard short-cuts whilst constantly trying different method names, compiling yet again and finally looking up help in the absence of IntelliSense.
I did however check out the latest trunk of SharpDevelop this weekend and was quite impressed with both the product and the source code. There was a bit of flickering with the solution explorer and the icons seem to be a bit of a steal-and-mash but otherwise looks first class.
[)amien
Linux vendor Red Hat have released a font family named Liberation under a GPL licence.
The family consists of three typefaces known as Liberation Serif, Liberation Sans and Liberation Mono each in normal, italic, bold and bold italic variants. The fonts are not hinted in this initial release so may not look too great on-screen at some sizes. Red Hat expect to release better-looking hinted versions in the future. Having attempted hinting Envy Code R font myself they have my sympathy.
These new fonts are designed to be metric-compatible (and therefore interchangeable) with the standard Windows fonts of Times New Roman, Arial and Courier New intending to "Liberate" documents from Microsoft's fonts. Bearing in mind Office 2007 pushes new typefaces as the default I'm not sure how successful this will be long-term.
Microsoft's typefaces were designed to be metric-compatible with the classic Times Roman (1931), Helvetica (1957) and Courier (1955) typefaces in the first place so perhaps Red Hat would have been better off licensing or mimicking those instead.
Screen shots follow.
The Liberation fonts on Windows using ClearType alongside the Windows fonts they intend to replace. The free Bitstream Vera family equivalent is also shown (only Vera Sans Mono is metric-compatible).
Microsoft's Windows fonts alongside Apple's versions of the originals and the Liberation fonts again all rendered with Mac OS X and sub-pixel precision aliasing. Point sizes have been increased by 3pt to compensate for the difference in on-screen DPI.
[)amien
If you're tired of the ugly-as-sin Courier New and have tried the popular well-known scalable TrueType/OpenType mono-spaced/fixed-width replacements:
And you're still not feeling it then why not give these potentials a quick spin.
Anonymous is typographer Mark Simonson's reworking of a bitmapped Mac font from the mid-90's into scalable TrueType form.
Rather unusually some of the characters have serifs and others do not - most likely due to the space restrictions of the original bitmap font but carried through to the design.
The overall feel is one that is less cluttered than Courier whilst also hanging onto the past - strangely enough anything written in Anonymous immediately makes me think it could be SQL syntax.
Character similarity does exist a little between the 1 and the l and the backwards slash through the zero might not be your cup-of-tea but it's certainly worth a look.
Available: free from Mark Simonson Studio.
A geometric styled mono-spaced font with distinguishable 0 and O, 1 and l, 5 and S that looks best at 15pt and above so maybe one for the programmer who prefers large fonts.
Available: free from Urban Fonts.
Another geometric design that works best at larger sizes. It has a slashed 0 and distinguishable glyphs.
Available: free from Urban Fonts.
For those that like very square fonts this one could be a contender - providing the author can fix the problem where an f and an l placed together causes both to disappear - an unexpected empty ligature perhaps?
Available: free from Typo3.
Feel free to comment on any other great finds but please, no more references to bit mapped pixel fonts!
If you're wondering what the state of Envy Code R is... I'm trying to solve the various issues with the heights at certain levels. I think the solution to the problems is delta-hinting but it is a bit of a black art and I don't have the right tools for the job.
Envy Code R has been updated since this post.
[)amien