Font size for programming?

Question

After reading this question I installed Consolas. The trouble is, now the text seems too small. I have to adjust it to size 12 to use it comfortably. Anyone else experience this when switching to Consolas (or any other font)? Do my eyes just have to adjust to this new font or is it a sign that my eyesight is deteriorating?

My resolution is 1280x1024

Solution 1

I use Consolas, 11pt on my 1440x900 laptop (Windows XP). I've been using 10pt for some time but I found myself having eye strain so I've set 11pt for all the development tools, editors and shells I'm using.

I would, however, be much hapier if 11pt Consolas would be a little smaller. I don't like that big difference between Consolas 10pt and 11pt.

Solution 2

I am a huge fan of ProFontWindows @ size 7 on a 24" monitor. Its small but very legible and it allows me to fit a lot more code on my coding screen.

http://www.tobias-jung.de/seekingprofont/

Solution 3

Consolas 9pt on 1280 x 1024 on 19" does it for me, but I'm sure Consolas wins the popularity contest at any size.

Solution 4

I use consolas 11 pt and that's plenty big for me, but I use a resolution of 1440 x 900.

PS. Never any harm to get your eyes checked out, when you work at this game.

Solution 5

I use Consolas 10pt on Windows, and have found it to be extremely legible no matter what my resolution -- or more specifically, the monitor's DPI -- was. This is on dual 19" 1280x1024 monitors, my home 19" 1440x900, a 15" laptop at 1024x768 and a 15.4" laptop at 1440x900 (which was the only one where I even considered adjusting the font size).

Now, where it gets tricky is in a Mac world. (Yes, I did a Bad Bad Thing and copied the font onto my Mac for XCode.) In the Mac world, I found 10pt to be completely illegible no matter what monitor I was hooked up to. For Mac, I adjusted myself up to (I think) 12 or 14pt. However, on-screen, that wound up being about the same size as 10pt in Windows for me, so it was the same net all around.

I used to love ProFont. Until I discovered Consolas.

View more solutions

Comments

[Dan]

Me too, I use profont for everything :)

[Roman Plášil]

It makes the font actullly readable as opposed to non-ClearType version :)

[ruffin]

So why does my ProFont look cruddy at 7? A "dots per pixel" issue with my displays? I want to maximize chars per pixel -- raster would be best, but I've had trouble finding truetype versions of the smallest ones, and end up using ProFont or Proggy Tiny as the lesser evils. But if I go lower than 9 on ProFont, it craptastics. Pretty sure a Retina MacBook "fixes" this issue, which is why I suppose it's "dots per pixel"... but I'm not sure how pixels would change from display to display other than Retina's scaling. Do other displays do the same?

[S.Serpooshan]

You can change the font size appearance exactly by a factor you want using the zoom percentage on the left bottom of text editor (in visual studio)

[alper]

The link is dead @Konrad