Dreamweaver's 8pt Andale Mono is smaller than UltraEdit's

[Tripecac]

Dreamweaver renders its 8pt Andale Mono font smaller than UltraEdit (and other apps including HomeSite). I like DW's 8pt Andale Mono because it lets me see lots of code while still remaining readable.

The 7pt Andale Mono in UltraEdit (and other editors) is much harder to read. Unfortunately, there's no 7.5pt font.

I've tried other small fonts for UltraEdit (proggy, prowin, etc.) but so far none of them have the same clarity as Dreamweaver's 8pt Andale Mono.

1) How can I get UltraEdit's font to look like DW's 8pt Andale Mono?
2) What other small non-proportional fonts would you recomment?

[Tripecac]

I've created a page which talks about the Andale Mono size issue:

http://txe.swa.com/issues/andale_mono/

It includes screen grabs, so you can see exactly what I see.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

[Tripecac]

Does Dreamweaver's 8pt Andale Mono (in the first screen grab on my page) look "great" (in terms of readability) to you guys? Or are my eyes just used to it?

Since no one seems to know (or care) about the Dreamweaver-vs-other apps issue, I'm almost ready to give up on finding a way to get UltraEdit to look like Dreamweaver's 8pt Andale Mono.

Unless someone has another solution, I think I might have to use one of the other small fonts: proggy, terminus, anonymous, etc. Unfortunately, none of them look nearly as good (to me) as Dreamweaver's 8pt Andale Mono.

That's why I'm wondering whether:

1) Dreamweaver's 8pt Andale Mono really is more readable than other similar-sized fonts
2) I'm just used to Dreamweaver's 8pt Andale Mono, and if I use another tiny font for a while, I'll probably get used to it and even prefer it

Can someone *please* let me know what you think? With this talk of UEStudio I really *want* to use UltraEdit as my primary editor, but until I can resolve this font issue, I find myself keeping on using Dreamweaver.

Thanks a ton (in hopeful advance) to anyone who takes the time to check the screen grabs and respond!

Travis

[Tripecac]

I've been using ProFontWindows, which seems to be the most readable of the small fonts. Even after several days of staring at it, I'm not used to it, though. It just doesn't look as nice as Andale Mono. I find myself squinting a lot, and have been getting headaches. I don't know if it's from the font or the pollen.

So, does anyone have any idea where I can get a nice-looking Andale Mono 7.5-pixel font? That seems the only solution right now, as none of the other fonts have "clicked" with me except Andale Mono, and UltraEdit's rendering of the 7 and 8 point Andale mono are too small and big, respectively. So 7.5 seems to be the ideal size. Does such a thing exist?

Well, if a 7.5 pixel Andale Mono doesn't exist, can I create it? Is there a free font editor that will let me import 8 point Andale Mono and then shrink it? I wouldn't distribute it (since Andale Mono is owned by someone), but I could tell other people how to shrink it themselves. I just need to know whether there's a tool that will let me do it easily.

Otherwise, how else can I get UltraEdit's Andale Mono to render the same size as Dreamweaver's? Or are there Andale Mono lookalikes out there which are closer to Dreamweaver's in size than UltraEdit?

Sorry if this is a boring, hard, and/or overdiscussed topic. I wish I could get some feedback so I could know how to hone my questions!

Travis

[Chris]

Travis,

Just so you know that everyone aren't ignoring you.

To be honest, Dreamweavers rendering of most fonts is dodgy (8pt isn't 8pt etc) so I'm thinking that your best bet would be to find a lookalike.

Here is some links to get you started.

http://keithdevens.com/wiki/ProgrammerFonts
http://www.proggyfonts.com/
http://www.lowing.org/fonts/
http://jeff.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/mono.html
http://www.tobias-jung.de/seekingprofont/
http://typographi.com/000744.php
http://www.procon.com.au/Fonts.htm

Sorry I can't be any more helpful.

Cheers,

Chris

[Tripecac]

Chris -

Thanks for the response! Yay! I thought I had the /dev/null thing going there.

I've checked out most of those links already (in my quest for a lookalike), but will try the others tomorrow.

I remember hating Dreamweaver's font at first, thinking it was too small, but then I got used to it and now it's hard to switch to anything else, because I like having lots of (readable) characters on the screen.

What font are you using? Do you have your screen resolution set to 1280x1024?

Travis

[Chris]

I'm currently using "ter-112n" taken from this site (listed as terminus-medium-r-normal--12-120-72-72-c-60-iso8859-1) and am using it in UltraEdit at 1280x1024

When I'm working in Dreamweaver the (25% of my work time probably), I use Andale Mono at "9pt (Smallest)".

Ta.

[Tripecac]

Chris -

Thanks! I just tried switching between ProFontWindows (size 10) to ter-112n (which I'd already installed) and noticed that they are very similar. Terminus' letters seem taller, but the width and line heights stayed exactly the same.

Terminus seems a little clearer, but on the down side, it cannot be resized.

ProFontWindow can be shrunk to size 8, which gives me 6 more lines when UltraEdit is maximized, without changing the horizontal spacing or hurting readability very much (though I think I prefer size 10 for extended viewing).

I followed the rest of your links, too. I had seen all of them before, but have not tried all the fonts on the McGill University page (which is overwhelming).

In Dreamweaver, if you shrink Andale Mono to 8 (one smaller than "smallest"), do you like the way it looks?

Travis

[Chris]

In Dreamweaver, if you shrink Andale Mono to 8 (one smaller than "smallest"), do you like the way it looks?

Not at all!

At 8pt in Dreamweaver I think Andale looks horrible... I don't like the spacing and letterforms become a little too distorted (squashed and unclear) for my liking.

[Tripecac]

Ahhh, so maybe over the course of a couple years I got used to Dreamweaver's size 8 Andale Mono, and now my eyes regard it as "normal", and regard any other font which does not look "normal" as bad? Hmm...

I'll give Terminus a shot today and see how quickly my eyes begin to accept it as "normal". Too bad it can't be resized, though!

Trav

[Chris]

Good luck and do let me know how things go.

[Tripecac]

Chris -

Terminus is great! I've been using it for countless hours since that last post. No issues at all. Thanks a ton!!!

Now all we need is a resizable version of it.

Travis

[Chris]

Glad to hear that.

I'll keep my eyes out for anything similar.

[johnph77]

I've been using Lucida Console for small non-scalable font applications.....