Hi!

How can i add more fonts to choose from in the settings for the editor?
I don't like any of 8 fonts that are there by 'default'

Pete

PHPEd as many other IDEs supports working with monospaced fonts.
If you install any new monospaced font phped will see it automatically, no special procedure required.

My favourite monospaced font is not picked up automatically by PhpED. It is called "terminal", and is one of the fonts that came with my default Win2k install.

I use this with many other windows apps and text editors (including the Eclipse IDE, also Notepad and Textpad), and I love it because it has a 6-point setting which is both tiny, *and* highly legible. It's like getting a 50% bigger screen.

How can I use this with PhpED? Courier 8pt seems so huge and clunky in comparison.

Dan

if that font is not picked up when "monospaced fonts" is checked, it means that the font is not monospaced. In other words, its character width is varying per character and/or depends on the font style (italic, bold) combinations. I'd recommend you to uncheck "monospaced fonts" checkbox.


Please make screenshot of them when some different combinations of bold/italic are used.

Terminal is definitely a monospaced font, but it is a bit weird. I think it may be intended primarily for places like the DOS-prompt window. It is available in NotePad and Textpad (and the DOS-prompt window), where you edit text files in a single font, without even mixing bold and italics and normal characters. But it is not available to other Windows apps like MS-Word.

I'm attaching an image of the font, and its availability in Notepad, and you can see how tiny and yet how very clear it still is.



Dan

I've been meaning to look into this issue for quite some time, as I find all the default Win fonts to be horrendous, at least those that PhpED makes available as monospaced fonts. (Like the OP, I identified Terminal as a possible excellent candidate, but couldn't get it to work in PhpED.)

My all-time favorite programming font is ProFont, which started out life as a Mac font created many years ago specifically for programming, but which has since been ported to most other platforms. Derived from the Mac's old Monaco font, it's designed to be very easy to read at small sizes and to make distinguishing between similar characters and punctuation symbols very easy.

So I went on the hunt for the Win version. I started here, the obvious place:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=profont

I downloaded fonts from the first and third links there. The result is somewhat confusing with PhpED. First of all, it doesn't mark the font as monospaced. So I went to Word, typed some mixed plain, regular, and italic text, and confirmed that the font is showing as fully monospaced even with mixed styles. I then tried it in WordPad, and it's showing varying widths between styled versions. What's up? Beyond that Windows slaughters fonts' appearances to fit them to its grid, I know little about how it renders type. Are there multiple rendering engines at work here? Is WordPad right or Word? And what makes PhpED see a font as monospaced?

I've been using Dina for ages now, wouldn't want any other font. I never had issues using it with PhpED.
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina/index.html

Thanks Bob and Blizz for your replies. I've downloaded and tried out ProFont and Sheldon (from ), as well as "Dina", from the link above. *All* are better than Courier! Profont is my favourite, although I see what you mean, Bob, that it doesn't really work properly-- it is monospaced, until something is made bold or italic (ie. when PhpED recognises it as a keyword), at which point it becomes a bit wider. But I think I'll stick with it for now for PhpED.

I still have to say that I would still use Windows' "Terminal" font if PhpED would let me. In the other apps that I use it in (reminder: including your comptetitor, the Eclipse IDE!) it is even smaller (6pt) than ProFont, letting me use even more of my screen real-estate. There is also a 5pt setting-- which is a *bit* ridiculous I concede, as some of the letters start looking asymmetrical... but it still differentiates clearly between 1, i, I, |, etc.

Terminal 6pt is the most information-dense and still clearly-readable monospaced font I know. If someone finds a way to use it in PhpED, or knows of another font that works at a small size like that, please let me know!

Dan

I think the rendering problem for Profont is similar to an issue I have seen with Lucida Console. By itself, the normal, italic, and bold variations of the fonts are monospaced. However, the character spacing for bold is slightly wider than for the normal and italic. Some programs have a way around this by positioning the character glyphs directly. Other, like PhpED, just render the characters to their true width.

I think we all agree that there is no bug in PhpED in this regard, but it would be nice if it had a way of dealing with these fonts.

BTW, I found a nice comparison of some monospaced fonts here: http://www.lowing.org/fonts/. Unfortunately some of the links on that page no longer work, but it still is a good starting point for someone looking to change

Thank you, Anno! I looked through the list of monospaced fonts, and "ProggyTiny" caught my eye. I downloaded it from found that the TTF version at 12pt (way smaller than that sounds) worked best.

I like it a smidgen better than ProFont so far, just based on the fact that it's a bit more compact but just as legible, IMHO. Windows' Terminal 6pt is still maybe 5% narrower and shorter, and I therefore would still like it 5% more, but I can make do for now.

Dan

I too like the Proggy fonts, especially Proggy Clean. My only "complaint" would be that italics don't look as nice compared to say Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, but I can live with that

I'm finding that using the "inbuilt" monospaced fonts (ie. Courier, Licida, WST, etc) works ok, but get slightly weird character size. Some of the characters (ie. W) get the left hand side chopped off if there's styles on any of the text on that line. Clicking on the line fixes it up.

Using ProFont or Proggy, etc bolded words become unbolded when the line is selected, which is very weird.

Using Dina resolves all this. There's no changes and it looks pretty good as well.

It's a bit strange that characters change size, etc when using various fonts.