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Programming With Proportional Fonts?

Posted by timothy on from the now-that's-wild-and-crazy dept.

theodp writes "Betty or Veronica? Mary Ann or Ginger? Proportional or Monospaced? There's renewed interest in an old blog post by Maas-Maarten Zeeman, in which M-MZ made the case for programming with proportional fonts, citing studies that show proportional fonts can be read 14% faster than fixed-width fonts. Try it for a couple of weeks, he suggests, and you might like it too. Nowadays, Lucida Grande is M-MZ's font of choice on OS X, and he uses Lucida Sans on Windows. Helvetica, anyone?"

4 of 394 comments (clear)

  1. Old news by dazedNconfuzed · · Score: 1, Redundant

    In the comments there, MMZ (author) notes "This was written 2 years ago."

    --
    Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
  2. Re:Hmmm... by HNS-I · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Sounds like it shouldn't be a problem as long as you stick with 'the one true style' K&R.

  3. Re:Monaco by bmo · · Score: 1, Redundant

    >background: black
    >foreground: X11:peachpuff or #99CF96
    >font: X11:10x20 or Monaco 12pt

    You just reinvented the amber monochrome screen.

    Now if you could simulate a long persistence phosphor.

    Maybe there's a market for used Wyse 80 amber terminals.

    --
    BMO

  4. Wusses. by binaryseraph · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Real men program using Wingdings.