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I guess there is some irony that I didn't bother to log in and posted that as Anonymous Coward.

Here is a link talking about Anonymous Pro: http://hivelogic.com/articles/anonymous-pro-programming-monospace-font

Download here: http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymouspro.html

Open Font License

I consider the suggestion of using a proportional font for programming frivolous and a bit juvenile. In fact, I'm of an age where it seems a little off if my SSH backgrounds are not green-on-black (and hence make them so).

That said, a *good* fixed font really makes a lot of difference. Not too long ago, I found one called Anonymous Pro, that I have become very fond of:

http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymouspro.html

It's freely available, TTF, and I've installed it most places. As much as I hate being forced onto Windows machines, in the few cases where I am, I actually think Consolas is pretty good quality too.

Forget Doctors, even designers and typographers care about inaccuracies in popular media.

Check out this article about anachronistic fonts in movies.

People are weird: we seem to care about just about everything.

*shudder* Created out of desperation to sidestep Adobe's closed Type 1 font standard, disseminated by Microsoft because of its cheapness, now widely used as most will overlook its comparative weaknesses; you are not alone in defaulting to it, Arial .

(Please excuse the terrible way that I have to post this - normally the comments are above the command, but slashdot was freaking out...) Here is my .vimrc file:
:com Openvimrc :tabnew ~/.vimrc " custom command to edit the _vimrc file from anywhere
:nnoremap <C-J> 5j " custom key mapping: CTRL-J -> move down 5 lines
:nnoremap <C-K> 5k " custom key mapping: CTRL-K -> move up 5 lines
:nmap <C-t> :tabnew<cr> " custom key mapping: CTRL-T -> open new tab
:nmap <C-tab> :tabnext<cr> " custom key mapping: CTRL-TAB -> move to next tab
:nmap <C-S-tab> :tabprevious<cr> " custom key mapping: CTRL-SHIFT-TAB -> move to previous tab
:autocmd BufEnter * lcd %:p:h " auto set the current working directory to be the same as the buffer's
:filetype on " toggle filetype detection
:filetype plugin on " toggle filetype plugins
:set number " turn on line numbering
:set tabstop=4 " indentation level
:set expandtab " convert tab key to spaces
:set shiftwidth=4 " indent/outdent
:set shiftround " always indent/outdent to nearest tabstop
:syntax on " turn on syntax highlighting
:au BufWinEnter * let w:m1=matchadd('ErrorMsg','\%81v.*',-1) " lines that are > 80 characters are error highlighted by default
:com SetLengthWarning :let w:m1=matchadd('ErrorMsg','\%81v.*',-1) " custom command to set > 80 character highlighting
:com UnsetLengthWarning :call matchdelete(w:m1) " custom command to unset > 80 character highlighting
:set backspace=indent,eol,start " allow backspace over everything
:set noerrorbells visualbell t_vb= " kill the bells
if has("gui_running") " gui specific properties
:set guioptions-=T " hide the GUI toolbar
:set guioptions-=m " hide the GUI menu
:colorscheme inkpot " set the color scheme
:set guifont=Anonymous:h13 " set the GUI font
:set lines=46 columns=100 " set the window size
else " cterm specific properties
:colorscheme default " set the color scheme
:hi LineNr ctermfg=red " set line numbering color to red
endif

(END)
There are some things to note. There are some commands in my .vimrc which will highlight text that has crossed the 80 character threshold. In order for those commands to work, vim7.2 or greater must be installed. Also, tab support was not added until vim7.0 I think. My gvim font is from http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymous.html>. If you want some excellent colorschemes, check out http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/>. Finally, I just discovered this a couple of days ago http://technotales.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/like-slime-for-vim/>: an awesome vim trick to use with irb.

Perhaps because he used his handwriting for it?

The only one of those whose writing resembles one of their fonts is Mark Simonson with his "felt tip roman" font.

The last two in TFA do have rather spiffy handwriting, though.

Wow, it's almost as if you were just rehashing the same stuff off this page. And considering your blog contains absolutely nothing about design, I'd say you were.

http://www.ms-studio.com/articles.html

Good article about it..

There's an excellent article here on the Arial/MS font bastardization issue.

Agreed .. I would much rather see the licensing and control flow back to the foundries like linotype who have a much better feel for layout and design than microsoft. If you're ever in NY, there's an excellent exhibit at the MoMA on Helvetica that has a 5 minute loop from Michael Price's excellent film.

What a total load of crap! Total MS fanboy defensiveness.

What "Helvetica"? If you're referring to Arial, then it's by no means a stolen Helvetica

Uh, yes, it absolutely is. It's a third-rate clone of Helvetica done by a company called Monotype so Microsoft didn't have to pay license fees. I guess you have no idea of history, so here, I'll educate you--read this called The Scourge of Arial where its dubious history is discussed. It's a "shameless imposter" of Helvetica thrust upon the world.

; they're totally different designs,

No, unless you think "totally different" means very minor differences.

and anyone who knows anything about type can tell them apart at a glance.

Because experienced designers know what goofy little changes exist in the ugly clone of Helvetica.

People get annoyed about Arial because it's ugly, not because it's "stolen".

Wrong, they're annoyed because it's stolen, and NOT ONLY is it a clone, but it's a bad, ugly one.

And what "Palatino"? Book Antiqua? Ancient history. Microsoft more than made up for it when they actually licensed the genuine Palatino from Linotype -- it's been bundled with Windows since Win2k.

Haha, no it's NOT "ancient history," and to claim Microsoft magically made up for their evil ways after they were forced to license the real font after everyone made a stink about it is total fanboyism.

By the way, this is nothing to do with "settling", "stealing", or "opening themselves up". This is a case of them being denied a trademark. There has been no lawsuit and no claim of damages or illegal activity: the only claim Linotype made was that Segoe was not an original design.

And as par for the course at Microsoft, it's not.

Take off the blinders. Next.

That sums it up if you read between the lines: Arial is the new and improved font which replaces Helvetica. Helvetica is obsolete because of Arial.

The "Grotesque" font, Arial's other ancestor, looks rather nice as well. I guess that was the attractive parent.

Pictures:

http://www.ms-studio.com/articlesarialsid.html

I suggest you read "The Scourge of Arial"...

http://www.ms-studio.com/articles.html

Sums it up pretty well.

Arial was designed as a screen font.

Because MS didn't want to pay Arial was designed as a clone of Helvetica, or more specifically, a bastardized version of Grotesque with letters squeezed to match the metrics of Helvetica. Microsoft commissioned Arial to get around paying Adobe for Helvetica, as Microsoft was trying to push TrueType instead of Adobe's PostScript.

Arial, and Grotesque, and Helvetica, are very much print fonts.

And here is a good little read on that Ariel/Helvetica history.

http://www.iliveonyourvisits.com/helvetica/

Arial was a Helvetica clone developed by Monospace way back when font cloning was the cool thing to do. Ideally, it sports the same spacing and metrics of Helvetica, making it a literally perfect substitute for Helvetica. Thus, they're both nearly equally readable on the web and in print, and anyone who tells you otherwise is being a prick.

So I'm free to clone the Arial typeface by developing my own font that represents it, but I can't just copy Microsoft's font.

As I've pointed out before, Arial already is a ripoff of another font (Helvetica)...

Actually, it's true. This is why Microsoft can ship a copy of Arial (a Helvetica ripoff made by Monotype) without paying any royalties to the company that owns the real typeface (Linotype). There's a decent writeup of the Arial/Helvetica issue here.

I like Mark Simonson's Anonymous font, which is a very nice, fixed width truetype font. You can get it here.

Go read http://www.ms-studio.com/articlesarialsid.html and try yourself.

And now for some good, typical Slashdot fun, this site seems to think it was Microsoft who stole helvetica and made arial. There are some slight differences, as are outlined here.

It all has to do with how the fonts are hinted, constructed, tweaked and tuned. It's a painful process, even for professionals who spend their work hours producing fonts.

Actually, with professional fonts it's more like months or years.

[...]mostly being a free (gratis) replacement for Verdana (and a couple of other fonts[...]

I find Helvetica to be a nice "replacement" for Arial. (Originally it was the other way around.) and Verdana, too. On a side note anything is a good replacement for Times New Roman *shudder*

Do not use Arial. Arial is a pig ugly font. It does not look like Helvetica. It is a second rate knock-off.

Read this and this, and don't use Arial again.

While those pages are loading, how can you say you are a webdesigner, when you haven't learnt that web pages are not wysiwyg? I bet your pages look shit.

In any case. Don't specify Arial, or at the very least, specifiy it last. Put "san serif" in the list in front. Arial is an abomination, and should be killed. If you want Helvetica, say so, but don't ever imagine that Arial can take the place of Helvetica.

Do not use Arial. Arial is a pig ugly font. It does not look like Helvetica. It is a second rate knock-off.

Read this and this, and don't use Arial again.

While those pages are loading, how can you say you are a webdesigner, when you haven't learnt that web pages are not wysiwyg? I bet your pages look shit.

In any case. Don't specify Arial, or at the very least, specifiy it last. Put "san serif" in the list in front. Arial is an abomination, and should be killed. If you want Helvetica, say so, but don't ever imagine that Arial can take the place of Helvetica.

IANAT (I am not a typographer), but only last week I stumbled across this interesting article entitled 'The Scourge of Arial', written by a designer called Mark Simonson (who, IMHO, show some slick design work elsewhere on his site).

The article discusses the history of several common / well known fonts, where they evolved from, and why.

It could make a refreshing change if we were to see the death of these Microsoft fonts -- if they were replaced by something better.

The default fonts in that package, and the fonts that come with Microsoft proucts, are actually knockoffs of the fonts that came with the original PostScript package.

including arial, ahhh arial...

That's that font that looks kinda like Helvetica, right? [Maybe off-topic, but a neat article anyway.]

So, given that these people are trying to tell stories, and that stories are always About Things, and that the people telling these stories are more interested in Telling than the Getting Details Right, there is always going to be glitches like this.

I would suggest that every movie ever made -- and for that matter, every other work of fiction ever told -- is going to have technical glitches that pisses off some Expert In The Field.

Hell, look hard enough and you can even fine people that think cinematic typography is offensive. :)

Anyway, there are two solutions to this. You can either enforce that storytellers have to get the details right, keeping in mind that this involves myriad areas of learning, that most people won't notice or care, and that hell its can get pretty damned subjective anyway. Not too many stories get told that way -- Kubrick and who else? (And look how long it took him to finish off each film...). The alternative is a little literary device we like to call "suspension of disbelief." The point is, ignore the details, the story isn't about those details, and you're not going to see the forest if you keep focusing on the fact that the trees are just cardboard cutouts. We know that already, please keep moving along with us anyway.

Not that this kind of deconstruction can't be fun or anything -- that fontography site cracks me up, and half the fun in damn near all scifi movies is the fundamental implausibility of it all. As another commenter noted, you don't have a problem with spiders granting superhuman powers, but you want to quibble over aerodynamics? Come on.... :)