{"id":260,"date":"2008-09-01T07:30:07","date_gmt":"2008-09-01T12:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/desktop\/2008\/09\/01\/choose-a-good-font-your-eyes-will-thank-you\/"},"modified":"2018-05-25T15:55:46","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T19:55:46","slug":"choose-a-good-font-your-eyes-will-thank-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/2008\/09\/01\/choose-a-good-font-your-eyes-will-thank-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Choose a good font &#8211; your eyes will thank you"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This past week I became aware that I was naively accepting MATLAB&#8217;s default code font, when I should be exploring the vast landscape of programmer fonts available. I finally settled on the gorgeous <a href=\"http:\/\/ftp.gnome.org\/pub\/GNOME\/sources\/ttf-bitstream-vera\/1.10\/\">Bitstream Vera Sans Monspaced font<\/a> pictured below:<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/images\/desktop\/ken_orr_choose_a_better_font\/editor_torn.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/div>\n<p>I think this font looks fantastic in MATLAB &#8211; I especially like the distinction between the letter &#8220;O&#8221; ( <img decoding=\"async\" style=\"vertical-align: middle;\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/images\/desktop\/ken_orr_choose_a_better_font\/letter_o.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/> ) and the digit &#8220;0&#8221; ( <img decoding=\"async\" style=\"vertical-align: middle;\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/images\/desktop\/ken_orr_choose_a_better_font\/zero.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/> ) (the zero has a tiny dot in it&#8217;s center). I find this font much smoother and more elegant to view. I think it even makes me enjoy using MATLAB more!<\/p>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t like Bitstream Vera Sans Monospaced, check out some of these other &#8220;programmer&#8221; fonts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Various fonts from <a href=\"\">proggy_fonts<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Link No Longer Working: http:\/\/www.tobias-jung.de\/seekingprofont\/\">ProFont<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/downloads\/details.aspx?familyid=22e69ae4-7e40-4807-8a86-b3d36fab68d3&amp;displaylang=en\">Consolas<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Once you&#8217;ve downloaded the font of your choice, you can change your code font in MATLAB by doing the following:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Select the <b>File -&gt; Preferences<\/b> menu item<\/li>\n<li>Select the <b>Fonts<\/b> group<\/li>\n<li>In the <b>Desktop code font<\/b> section, select a font in the font combo box (pictured below).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/images\/desktop\/ken_orr_choose_a_better_font\/preferences_small.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"486\" height=\"371\" border=\"0\" \/><\/div>\n<p>You can also change the font for a specific component (e.g. the Editor) by selecting the <b>Custom<\/b> item under <b>Fonts<\/b> in the preferences tree. In the <b>Desktop tools<\/b> section, select the component to change the font for, select the category of font to change (e.g. Desktop code) and finally select a font in the combo box.<\/p>\n<p>For more information on installing fonts check out these links:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"http:\/\/docs.info.apple.com\/article.html?path=FontBook\/2.0\/en\/fb680.html (link no longer works)\">Installing a font on Mac<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/kb\/314960\">Installing a font on Windows<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.linuxjournal.com\/content\/installing-fonts-linux\">Installing a font on Linux<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What font do you use?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past week I became aware that I was naively accepting MATLAB&#8217;s default code font, when I should be exploring the vast landscape of programmer fonts available. I finally settled on the&#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/2008\/09\/01\/choose-a-good-font-your-eyes-will-thank-you\/\">read more >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,2,9,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5573,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/5573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/community\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}