Re: Coder friendly font Anonymous Pro (ttf-anonymous-pro)

[Nate Bargmann]

Everything is a personal preference and thanks for bringing this font to
my attention, Cindy.  There are so many fonts available that it is time
consuming to find just the right one.  I've been using Consolas for a
long enough time that I could tell immediately that I prefer it over the
Anonymous Pro.  It was fun to check and I'll keep it installed.  One
never knows...

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us

Re: Coder friendly font Anonymous Pro (ttf-anonymous-pro)

[Joe Pfeiffer]

David Wright  writes:

> Quoting Joe Pfeiffer (pfeif...@cs.nmsu.edu):

>> Looks interesting -- I've been using Terminus for quite a while -- it's
>> another fixed-width programmer-friendly font, Comparing it with
>> Anonymous Pro, it seems a bit narrows and doesn't seem to have as much
 ^^^narrower
>> variation in apparent weight (Anonymous Pro's W is so much darker than
>> the other characters on a line I'm looking at that it looks like it's in
>> Bold!).
>
> So you've installed it? Are you using it in a VC or an xterm?
>
> I'm not sure how you would use it: the package contains four TTF files
> and that's it.

I appear to have installed at some point; I tend to just install the
fonts that come up in the repository without thinking about it.

I tried it in an xterm (more specifically, xfce4-terminal).  I just
went to the preference's editor, saw that it was one of the font
options, and switched to it.  All the text in all my terminal windows
was suddenly in Anonymous Pro.

Re: Coder friendly font Anonymous Pro (ttf-anonymous-pro)

[David Wright]

Quoting Joe Pfeiffer (pfeif...@cs.nmsu.edu):
> David Wright  writes:
> 
> > Quoting Joe Pfeiffer (pfeif...@cs.nmsu.edu):
> 
> >> Looks interesting -- I've been using Terminus for quite a while -- it's
> >> another fixed-width programmer-friendly font, Comparing it with
> >> Anonymous Pro, it seems a bit narrows and doesn't seem to have as much
>  ^^^narrower
> >> variation in apparent weight (Anonymous Pro's W is so much darker than
> >> the other characters on a line I'm looking at that it looks like it's in
> >> Bold!).
> >
> > So you've installed it? Are you using it in a VC or an xterm?
> >
> > I'm not sure how you would use it: the package contains four TTF files
> > and that's it.
> 
> I appear to have installed at some point; I tend to just install the
> fonts that come up in the repository without thinking about it.
> 
> I tried it in an xterm (more specifically, xfce4-terminal).  I just
> went to the preference's editor, saw that it was one of the font
> options, and switched to it.  All the text in all my terminal windows
> was suddenly in Anonymous Pro.

Well, it's defeated me. Doing anything with fonts is always
frustrating. For years I used Computer Modern, then Palatino because,
with respect, it looked less like a Knuth textbook. IIRC it was
texlive which meant I had to find out that Palatino is now "TeX Gyre
Pagella", whatever that means.

I use   dpkg-reconfigure console-setup   to set a console font. You
don't get much choice. I suppose it's just what's in
/usr/share/consolefonts/ though I never get offered unifont even
though I have /usr/share/consolefonts/Unifont-APL8x16.psf.gz from
package psf-unifont which is PSF (console) version of GNU Unifont
with APL support.

So I stick to Terminus on the console. I'll make the observation that
using   dpkg-reconfigure console-setupon a real VC while X is
running is a no-no. You really have to exit X altogether.

Moving on to X, well on the whole I just install a load of fonts on
the basis that applications will find and use them. But how you find
out what a font is, and then change it, that's beyond me.

In Xterm, I'm fairly happy just so long as I can find a string like
-jmk-Neep-Medium-R-Normal--20-180-75-75-C-100-ISO10646-1 or 8x13
associated with the font. But I can't try Anonymous Pro because
xlsfonts shows no such string.

But take, for example, the font that iceweasel uses to display the
address of a link when you hover over it. It's very small and spindly,
and makes the characters "rn" look exactly like "m". I often have to
fire up xzoom to take a closer look.

Anyway, I looked at https://wiki.debian.org/Fonts after "installing"
ttf-anonymous-pro. I can see the four files with fc-list, and I ran
fc-cache -fv   for luck.

I ran
$ dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config
and
$ dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig
[sic] but had to do so as root, obviously. I haven't a clue what
the prompts are talking about.

I find sections like:

Font Formats
ttf, otf, bdf, pfb, fnt, woff

totally unenlightening.

The https://wiki.debian.org/Fonts/FAQ appears to be a historical
document.

https://wiki.debian.org/TrueType says everything will just happen
automatically without actually saying *what* happens automatically.

So I'd be very interested to know, having installed ttf-anonymous-pro,
how to actually use it.

Sorry to ramble but, because I can't grasp any pattern to linux fonts,
I can't organise my thoughts/findings/intentions in any logical order.
The mess is contagious.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Coder friendly font Anonymous Pro (ttf-anonymous-pro)

[Reco]

 Hi.

On Mon, 21 Sep 2015 12:33:42 -0400
Cindy-Sue Causey  wrote:

> One more then I hear my bird feeders calling. Couple days ago I was
> trying to find a pirate friendly font via an "apt-cache search"
> inquiry. No pirates (that weren't part of a *2GB* package, yar!),
> but stumbled on a font called "Anonymous Pro" that is billed as a
> "fixed width sans serif font designed for coders".
> 
> Further description is: "Anonymous Pro (2009) is a family of four
> fixed-width fonts designed  especially with coding in mind. Characters
> that could be mistaken for  one another (O, 0, I, l, 1, etc.) have
> distinct shapes to make them  easier to tell apart in the context of
> source code."
> 
> Since I had just like the day before installed "devscripts", it
> sounded like a potential win worth pursuing. It looks very similar to
> Monospace, but my brain still keeps actively noticing that there is
> definitely a user-friendly difference..

A small nitpick. Very small. There's no font called "Monospace", it's
an alias to some other font. Which, I presume, actually called DejaVu
Sans Mono. A quick check with 'fc-match Monospace' should clear all
possible uncertainties.


> Sharing because it might just help someone else who spends a lot of
> time using terminals. As I write that, for some reason it comes to
> mind that it may be standard with large installs. If not, the package
> name again is ttf-anonymous-pro.

I'm not trying to argue about tastes here, but if asked about the best
*terminal* font - I always suggest Terminus (which is xfonts-terminus).
While it lacks CJK glyphs and this modern Unicode emoji jumbo - it gets
the job done for me since '06.

Reco

Re: Coder friendly font Anonymous Pro (ttf-anonymous-pro)

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Cindy-Sue Causey  writes:

> One more then I hear my bird feeders calling. Couple days ago I was
> trying to find a pirate friendly font via an "apt-cache search"
> inquiry. No pirates (that weren't part of a *2GB* package, yar!),
> but stumbled on a font called "Anonymous Pro" that is billed as a
> "fixed width sans serif font designed for coders".
>
> Further description is: "Anonymous Pro (2009) is a family of four
> fixed-width fonts designed  especially with coding in mind. Characters
> that could be mistaken for  one another (O, 0, I, l, 1, etc.) have
> distinct shapes to make them  easier to tell apart in the context of
> source code."
>
> Since I had just like the day before installed "devscripts", it
> sounded like a potential win worth pursuing. It looks very similar to
> Monospace, but my brain still keeps actively noticing that there is
> definitely a user-friendly difference..
>
> Sharing because it might just help someone else who spends a lot of
> time using terminals. As I write that, for some reason it comes to
> mind that it may be standard with large installs. If not, the package
> name again is ttf-anonymous-pro.

Looks interesting -- I've been using Terminus for quite a while -- it's
another fixed-width programmer-friendly font, Comparing it with
Anonymous Pro, it seems a bit narrows and doesn't seem to have as much
variation in apparent weight (Anonymous Pro's W is so much darker than
the other characters on a line I'm looking at that it looks like it's in
Bold!).

Re: Coder friendly font Anonymous Pro (ttf-anonymous-pro)

[David Wright]

Quoting Joe Pfeiffer (pfeif...@cs.nmsu.edu):
> Cindy-Sue Causey  writes:
> 
> > One more then I hear my bird feeders calling. Couple days ago I was
> > trying to find a pirate friendly font via an "apt-cache search"
> > inquiry. No pirates (that weren't part of a *2GB* package, yar!),
> > but stumbled on a font called "Anonymous Pro" that is billed as a
> > "fixed width sans serif font designed for coders".
> >
> > Further description is: "Anonymous Pro (2009) is a family of four
> > fixed-width fonts designed  especially with coding in mind. Characters
> > that could be mistaken for  one another (O, 0, I, l, 1, etc.) have
> > distinct shapes to make them  easier to tell apart in the context of
> > source code."
> >
> > Since I had just like the day before installed "devscripts", it
> > sounded like a potential win worth pursuing. It looks very similar to
> > Monospace, but my brain still keeps actively noticing that there is
> > definitely a user-friendly difference..
> >
> > Sharing because it might just help someone else who spends a lot of
> > time using terminals. As I write that, for some reason it comes to
> > mind that it may be standard with large installs. If not, the package
> > name again is ttf-anonymous-pro.
> 
> Looks interesting -- I've been using Terminus for quite a while -- it's
> another fixed-width programmer-friendly font, Comparing it with
> Anonymous Pro, it seems a bit narrows and doesn't seem to have as much
> variation in apparent weight (Anonymous Pro's W is so much darker than
> the other characters on a line I'm looking at that it looks like it's in
> Bold!).

So you've installed it? Are you using it in a VC or an xterm?

I'm not sure how you would use it: the package contains four TTF files
and that's it.

Cheers,
David.