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Inconsolata - a nice programming font

My current favorite Emacs*font to work with the new XFT backend is Inconsolata. I've tried a few others, but this font is just very clear, not too fat and not too skinny, and it has a slashed zero, as a programming font should.

There's a debian package too, called "ttf-inconsolata". ** See update below.

Screenshot:

Inconsolata font

Update: the current debian ttf-inconsolata has a bug somewhere that means you can't actually use the font. A simple remedy is to install the ttf-inconsolata package and then symlink /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-inconsolata/Inconsolata.ttf to /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-inconsolata/Inconsolata.otf

This may not be technically correct, but it does work.

Also, on my current emacs CVS builds, I need to add the following to my .Xresources to get the anti-aliasing to work reliably:

Emacs.FontBackend: xft

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 14:02 and is filed under english. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Inconsolata - a nice programming font”

  1. Remco Says:
    February 26th, 2008 at 22:02

    Ooooh mooi! Die ga ik ook proberen. Dank voor de tip.

  2. Larry Says:
    March 20th, 2008 at 19:03

    Looks a lot like the monaco font I use on my Mac. I love it.

  3. VK Says:
    June 16th, 2008 at 17:06

    I really like the stroked zero but it still bears another regular oops: too subtle difference between the small letter l and the number 1. If it would have that fixed then I would rate it 9 out of 10 at least.

  4. Ron Says:
    October 12th, 2008 at 07:10

    Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) also has a ttf-inconsolata package, which works without a symlink. I really like the font on first impression. I set it for xterm with the following (in .Xresources or .Xdefault, as appropriate):

    XTerm*faceName: Inconsolata
    XTerm*faceSize: 11

    (Be sure to run “xrdb -merge .Xresources” to update X config.)

    Side-by-side, the letter l and the number 1 are very distinct, but the letter l does look like the number 1 from other fonts. Personally, I don’t have a problem there.

    Thanks for the post.

    -Ron