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I tried proportional fonts for programming, and maybe they are more readable, but the fact that it's not like a 2D grid any more just has too many disadvantages. For example, here are some things that I do often in my code that aren't possible (or look really ugly) with proportional fonts:

Headers like this can't be made all the same length:

Code:

// Example ////////////////////////////////////////////

You can't neatly align long function parameters on multiple lines, like this:

Code:

someFunction(reallyLongParameter,

            example,

            test);

And you can't align comments that are to the right of your code, like this:

Code:

i=0;                  // counter variable

for (i=0; i<10; i++) { // iterate from 0 to 9 (inclusive)

    printf("%i\n");    // print the counter's value

}

And finally, Vim (the editor I use most of the time for programming) doesn't support proportional fonts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MTK358 (Post 4441136)

Code:

// Example ////////////////////////////////////////////

You can't neatly align long function parameters on multiple lines, like this:

Code:

someFunction(reallyLongParameter,

            example,

            test);

And you can't align comments that are to the right of your code, like this:

Code:

i=0;                  // counter variable

for (i=0; i<10; i++) { // iterate from 0 to 9 (inclusive)

    printf("%i\n");    // print the counter's value

}

Can be easily done, you need IDE with elastic tabs support. See attachment. The only "trick" is to use tabs instead of spaces for idents.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MTK358 (Post 4441136)

And finally, Vim (the editor I use most of the time for programming) doesn't support proportional fonts.

Are you certain? I vaguely recall launching either gvim or xemacs with proportional font support few years ago on linux.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SigTerm (Post 4441152)

Can be easily done, you need IDE with elastic tabs support. See attachment. The only "trick" is to use tabs instead of spaces for idents.

Can Vim support elastic tabstops?

Quote:

Originally Posted by SigTerm (Post 4441152)

Are you certain? I vaguely recall launching either gvim or xemacs with proportional font support few years ago on linux.

I attached a screenshot of GVim with the font set to DejaVu Serif. It still treats the characters as if they have the same width.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MTK358 (Post 4441170)

Can Vim support elastic tabstops?

Well, even if it doesn't support them, you could probably hack it to add support (the difficulty is hard to estimate, though - I haven't read vim's source). I don't use gvim for development (only for emergency situations), and I don't see the reason to use only vim for development.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MTK358 (Post 4441170)

I attached a screenshot of GVim with the font set to DejaVu Serif. It still treats the characters as if they have the same width.

Then I guess it was XEmacs.

Am I still considered a gui user if I mostly use the gui as a place to keep 4 or 5 urxvts running screen in order to use vim and shell tools? :)

Quote:

Am I still considered a gui user if I mostly use the gui as a place to keep 4 or 5 urxvts running screen in order to use vim and shell tools?

You make it sound like something to be ashamed of. It isn't. Those things are made for a purpose.

--- rod.

Quote:

Originally Posted by theNbomr (Post 4441258)

You make it sound like something to be ashamed of. It isn't. Those things are made for a purpose.

Yeah, I just find it funny that the latest and greatest tech seems to serve best by being used as a platform for technology that's older than dirt.

It's all chill, chaps, Sigterm's entitled to his curt but clear replies to my statements as much as I was entitled to make them in the first place.

He's clearly blind and wrong, but entitled to his opinion ;)
Actually, not joking 100%, dude what is that font, how can we talk about any readability when you're suffering that utter lack of anti-aliasing/sub-pixel rendering?!

As for verbose naming schemes, we can be verbose in any font so you seem to be confusing the issue by mentioning separaters like _, and I'm not sure I agree with your logic. I'd assume my brain would be tuned to best pick up these natural words when they're correctly separated in normal prose, rather than run together lines of characters. Therefore, I don't think it would be any easier to read concatenated words (assuming no separators) if they could have varying minor spacing around/between them, rather than having a consistant pixel position for their ends as with a monospaced font. As with that trick of shuffling a word's inner characters, leaving only the first and last ones unchanged, and the word still being almost as readable, if you remove the end hints, you brain surely has far more permutations to search/match.

Perhaps a bad example:
togetherthereherheretheirtogather
togetherthereherheretheirtogather

I have written some C++, and use similarly-styled imperative languages (Java, C#, PHP, JS, etc), but also done functional programming like Haskell, and fear how one of the most fun languages, Python, would appear without monospaced fonts. Perhaps not an issue, but I don't think I'm about to try it.

Would proportional fonts really interfere with e.g. 4space tabs aligning things? Because that does sound 'game-breaking' for programming.
I seemed to have missed you clarifying in post 17 that it would not, unless I'm mistaken.

Block selection/edit mode is beast when you need it.

konsolebox, you know Notepad++ is Scintilla-based, and that there are cross-platform varients so that you don't need Wine, right?

I voted GUI, since Geany is my main editor/IDE for what little tinkering I do (though I compile in a separate X terminal), but I occasionally use nano for quick editing.

I can use vi(m), but I don't really know all the ins and outs of it; all I really know are the basic line/word manipulation comands (d(n)w, dd, p), and (w)q(!).

Yes, I'm an editor weenie.

Quote: