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by mcswell 330 days ago
Sans serifs...except when the serifs help distinguish 1 from l and from I, etc.

Why not use a monospaced serif font in the first place? I get that they don't seem to be common, but maybe they should be.

2 comments

I think it's because traditionally computer screens have pretty low DPI, and serifs can be really tricky to render well at low DPI. In print, that's not an issue, and serif fonts really shine.

On high-DPI screens, like the one I'm currently using, serif monospace fonts can also look really good. For example, I'm typing in Latin Modern Mono (based on TeX's default typewriter font) in this text box.

I agree. I'm a big fan of Luxi Mono, but I avoid it when publishing stuff because others seem to dislike serifs.
Luxi Mono is great. Do you have an opinion on Go Mono [1]? It's by the same creators as the Luxi fonts (Bigelow & Holmes) and very similar to Luxi Mono but fixes some legibility issues. Moreover, it's freely licensed.

[1] https://go.dev/blog/go-fonts

Did not know about it but I like it!