[[!meta title="Xorg terminal emulator font list"]]

## Introduction

This page describes fonts I tested for usability in
a terminal emulator. The ratings may be highly subjective
and describe my way to find good fonts.
This site is inspired by the
[Nice fonts for X terminals](http://adamspiers.org/computing/zsh/files/prompts/X_fonts.README)
site. It does not try to make things better, just again
to find my personal preferences.

## How I tested

I'm using a small script named **urxvt-font-change**,
which is part of the nsbin git repository. This script
allows me to dynamically change the font in the running
terminal. Besides searching around the net for font names,
I've used two local sources:

 * xlsfonts (core X font subsystem)
 * fc-list (xft)

So I load a new font, issue an **ls** in my home directory
(which is pretty much mixed up) and decide whether I can
read the content easily or not and whether it made
some kind of special impression.

## Objectives

There are a lot of different objectives for choosing
a font that suits you. For me, the following objectives
are interesting: Is the font usable for ...

 * small screens
 * presentations
 * my eyes

The last point is probably mostly subjective, a font
must "look good" to me.


## Font list

And here's the actual font table:


[[!table  data="""
Font name | Size | Recommended | Remarks
5x7 | tiny | no | Unreadable
nexus | tiny | no | Digiclock style font, but hard to read
shine | tiny | no | Similar to nexus, bit better
outcast | tiny | no | Similar to shine, bit better
edges | tiny | no | Similar to nexus, more edges
suxus | tiny | no | Unreadable
tixus | tiny | yes | Very good readable for such a small font
smallcaps | small | no | filenames as caps on unix?
artsie | small | yes | Good readable
smooth | small | undecided | Good overall, but "M" looks weired and font feels stretched
smoothansi | small | undecided | Good overall, but "M" looks weired and font feels stretched
kates | small-medium | no | Very fancy (impressive?), but partly hard to read
bigcaps | small-medium | no | Hurts my eyes
ai14 | medium | yes | Good readable
lucidasans-10 | medium | no | Way too much whitespace
lucidasanstypewriter-10 | medium | yes | Good readable
10x20 | medium | no | Mostly good readable, looks a bit disarranged
xft:Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:style=Bold | medium | yes | Good readable
variable | medium-large | no | Unreadable
12x24 | large | undecided | Good readable, strange style, good size
xft:Bitstream Vera Serif:style=Roman | large | | Too much whitespace
xft:DejaVu Sans,DejaVu Sans Condensed:style=Condensed Bold,Bold| large | | Too much whitespace
lucidasanstypewriter-24 | extra large | yes | Even blind can read it
"""]]

## See also

 * [Optimal Use of Fonts on Linux](http://avi.alkalay.net/linux/docs/font-howto/Font.html)
 * [Nice fonts for X terminals](http://adamspiers.org/computing/zsh/files/prompts/X_fonts.README)

[[!tag unix]]