Re: Re: ACS font (was: Way to programmatically ...)

"MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote on 08/03/2017
05:42:43 PM:

----- Message from John Yeung <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx> on Thu, 3
Aug 2017 17:26:25 -0400 -----

To:

Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

Subject:

Re: ACS font (was: Way to programmatically determine whether 32-bit
or 64-bit Client Access is installed?)

On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 4:53 PM, Dan <dan27649@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 4:28 PM, <MichaelQuigley@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It's been a while, but this looks like it should work for you:
http://www.fonts101.com/fonts/view/Uncategorized/51239/Monaco.aspx

Crud. Need admin access to install fonts. Maybe next time I need to

apply

a service pack.

Dan, why the fascination with Monaco? Personally, I think it's not as
good as Inconsolata. Of course this is a highly subjective issue, but
unless you find something *much* better than what you have, it's not
worth the trouble. Monaco is *at best* roughly as good as Inconsolata.

You've hit on the biggest consideration. It's personal choice or as you
say "highly subjective." I went round and round with another programmer
who loves everything coded in all UPPERCASE. To me it's hard to read. So I
did a lot of research. There are tons of arguments. Most favor mixed case.
But the most scientific study I read basically concluded that it all
depends on what you're used to. (Of course, the individuals that prefer
all uppercase don't read books that are all that way. So in the general
populace, mixed case will prevail. But it's all based on what you're used
to.)

I do like the look of Consolas or Inconsolata, but they don't fill the
screen in ACS--at least not for me. The characters are too short and I end
up with dead space (large blank areas) at the top and bottom of the
screen. For me, Monaco fills the screen quite nicely while looking fairly
crisp. If I could find a Consolas derivative with taller characters, I
would switch in a heartbeat.

In the thread that I tried to start, I mentioned that Consolas is no
good with ACS because ACS seems not to have any antialiasing at all.
Well, Jeff Atwood (famous programmer and cofounder of Stack Overflow)
specifically mentions Inconsolata as a good choice for when you don't
have ClearType (Microsoft's current antialiasing scheme) enabled,
because Consolas is crap without it. He also doesn't rate Monaco very
highly:

<https://blog.codinghorror.com/revisiting-programming-fonts/>

I will say this about Monaco: It's quite distinctive, with a very
strong personality. If you are very drawn to Monaco, and get used to
it, then I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that everything else
pales in comparison. I've tried it, and I could not acquire that
taste. Like Atwood, I find Monaco kind of a mess. I especially don't
like the lowercase ell, either on its own or next to other letters. In
some point sizes, the lowercase i is also a sore thumb.

I'm not sure what the problem is with the character i. I will give you the
lowercase ell is unusual, but it makes a quick and easy distinction
between an l (ell) and a 1 (one).

As you stated, it highly subjective and depends to a large degree on past
experience which yields one's personal taste.

John Y.

Michael Quigley
Computer Services
The Way International
www.TheWay.org