What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

pogeymanz · 2013-02-26 19:40:34

My screen's resolution sucks, so there's no amount of tweaking that will fix that. But if I set most fonts to less than 8, they are horrible. Some are tolerable at 7, like DejaVu Sans and Droid Sans.

Any other fonts that do well at small sizes? What are your preferred text-editor fonts?

brebs · 2013-02-26 20:22:08

I've stuck with Liberation Mono for a long time.

MrCode · 2013-02-26 20:29:03

I use DejaVu Sans at 6 pt as my UI font, and it looks okay (not great, but certainly readable). This is with freetype2-infinality.

If you're into bitmap fonts, Tamsyn 7 looks pretty decent IMHO, though I wouldn't use it as a UI font.

ozar · 2013-02-26 20:32:07

for good small-sized bitmap fonts, also look at "profont" found in community repo

Iranon · 2013-02-26 20:48:22

You already listed the best ones.
Steve Matteson is probably the most successful creator of screen fonts: Liberation fonts, Droid fonts, Open Sans, Segoe (the latter may not be as useful as it's specifically optimised for Windows).
PT Sans and Serif are also very solid if you want something a little quirkier, Ubuntu is also very well done if you like spurless Sans Serifs.

Beyond that... trial and error. Most other freely available fonts aren't optimised for the screen to the same degree, but some will render well on a given system more or less by chance.

WorMzy · 2013-02-26 20:54:26

Check out the artwiz-fonts, in extra. Lime, mint and nu are my personal favourites.

Wibjarm · 2013-02-26 21:20:25

Also, don't forget about ninjaaron's fonts, if you don't mind that they're bitmap. I've been using bitocra7 for all my monospaced needs for quite a while now, and it's great. For proportional fonts, verdana seems to stay readable pretty well at small sizes (5pt is just fine, 4pt the line thicknesses get a bit funky but it's still perfectly readable).

elkoraco · 2013-02-26 21:32:47

Fixed and Terminus, no question. Especially Fixed. You can read that one from four feet away at 10pt.

thisoldman · 2013-02-26 23:28:27

I also think fixed is readable, even at 6 points. I don't know what terminal emulator you are using, but legibility of small fonts seems to improve if you disallow bold font faces. I distinguish bold fonts by font color in urxvt and xterm.

blueblob · 2013-02-27 21:08:34

proggytinysz

EDIT: sorry, I missed the part about favorite
My favorite is Envy Code R

but all of the proggy fonts look good at very small sizes.

Last edited by blueblob (2013-02-27 21:10:02)

tdy · 2013-02-27 21:47:39

Yes, I think the proggy fonts fit this description. Personally I think they only look good when they're really small (even the ones that aren't described as small/tiny), so that's why I don't actually use them myself.. too small for my normal usage, but might work for you.

"clean" is another option.

Heikete · 2013-02-27 21:55:15

What do you use as a GUI font e. g. on buttons?
Fixed and similar have one disadvantage as GUI fonts. They are fixed-width, that is to say letter 'i' has the same
width as 'm'. If you keep your GTK theme tight, this can cause problems sometimes.
Therefore I prefer proportional bitmap Helvetica.
Do you remember Blender's 2.4 GUI font? That's it.
Once it had been widely used in Gnome 1.0 (Red Hat) but later I couldn't find it.
Fortunately there's a pixel-to-pixel copy - Helxetica. Works very well without antialiasing.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-02-26 19:40:34

What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

#2 2013-02-26 20:22:08

Re: What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

#3 2013-02-26 20:29:03

Re: What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

#4 2013-02-26 20:32:07

Re: What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

#5 2013-02-26 20:48:22

Re: What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

#6 2013-02-26 20:54:26

Re: What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

#7 2013-02-26 21:20:25

Re: What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

#8 2013-02-26 21:32:47

Re: What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

#9 2013-02-26 23:28:27

Re: What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

#10 2013-02-27 21:08:34

Re: What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

#11 2013-02-27 21:47:39

Re: What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

#12 2013-02-27 21:55:15

Re: What fonts are the most readable at the smallest sizes?

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