Introduction
This page describes fonts I tested for usability in a terminal emulator. The ratings may be highly subjective and describe my way to find good fonts. This site is inspired by the Nice fonts for X terminals site. It does not try to make things better, just again to find my personal preferences.
How I tested
I'm using a small script named urxvt-font-change, which is part of the nsbin git repository. This script allows me to dynamically change the font in the running terminal. Besides searching around the net for font names, I've used two local sources:
- xlsfonts (core X font subsystem)
- fc-list (xft)
So I load a new font, issue an ls in my home directory (which is pretty much mixed up) and decide whether I can read the content easily or not and whether it made some kind of special impression.
Reloading or adding core fonts can be via
xset fp+ /usr/share/fonts/local/
xset fp rehash
Objectives
There are a lot of different objectives for choosing a font that suits you. For me, the following objectives are interesting: Is the font usable for ...
- small screens
- presentations
- my eyes
The last point is probably mostly subjective, a font must "look good" to me.
Font list
And here's the actual font table:
| Font name | Size | Recommended | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5x7 | tiny | no | Unreadable |
| nexus | tiny | no | Digiclock style font, but hard to read |
| shine | tiny | no | Similar to nexus, bit better |
| outcast | tiny | no | Similar to shine, bit better |
| edges | tiny | no | Similar to nexus, more edges |
| suxus | tiny | no | Unreadable |
| tixus | tiny | yes | Very well readable for such a small font |
| smallcaps | small | no | filenames as caps on unix? |
| smooth | small | undecided | Good overall, but "M" looks weired and font feels stretched |
| artsie | small | yes | Well readable |
| fixed | small | yes | Well readable |
| --terminus-----12------- | tiny-small | yes | Well readable |
| smoothansi | small | undecided | Good overall, but "M" looks weired and font feels stretched |
| xft:DejaVu Sans Mono:pixelsize=10 | small | yes | Well readable |
| kates | small-medium | no | Very fancy (impressive?), but partly hard to read |
| bigcaps | small-medium | no | Hurts my eyes |
| xft:Liberation Mono:style=Regular | small-medium | yes | Well readable |
| xft:Source Code Pro | small-medium | yes | Well readable, i,l,1 well distinguishable |
| a14 | medium | yes | Well readable |
| xft:Inconsolata:style=Medium | medium | yes | Well readable |
| --terminus-----14------- | medium | yes | Well readable |
| lucidasans-10 | medium | no | Way too much whitespace |
| xft:Droid Sans:style=Regular | medium | no | Too much whitespace, not instantly good readable |
| MonteCarlo:style=Sans Bold | medium | no | Not Bold, nor incredible easy to read |
| lucidasanstypewriter-10 | medium | yes | Very well readable |
| 10x20 | medium | no | Mostly good readable, looks a bit disarranged |
| xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:style=Bold | medium | yes | Very well readable |
| xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:style=Roman | medium | yes | Very well readable |
| variable | medium-large | no | Unreadable |
| 12x24 | large | undecided | Well readable, strange style, good size |
| xft:Bitstream Vera Serif:style=Roman | large | Too much whitespace | |
| xft:DejaVu Sans,DejaVu Sans Condensed:style=Condensed Bold,Bold | large | Too much whitespace | |
| --terminus-----32------- | large | yes | |
| lucidasanstypewriter-24 | extra large | yes | Even blind can read it |