Fonts for UltraEdit

[Sean Stewart]

If you spend a lot of your time in UltraEdit, you've probably gotten sick of the courier font which it uses by default. A number of Runge employees use a replacement font -- five minutes effort can take you from this



to this



which I find a lot more readable -- and you get more lines on the screen. I use a font called "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono", which is an open source font from the people at the GNOME project. Many people use Andale Mono also, which is a similar font Microsoft once produced. The directions below are for the Bitstream Vera font, but if you can find Andale or any other font you like the steps are the same.

To install a replacement font:
1. Download this to your computer.
2. Extract the contents anywhere.
3. From Start|Control Panel|Fonts, File|Install New Font.
4. Go to the directory you extracted the fonts to. Select all, and select "Copy fonts to Fonts folder", then hit Ok.
5. Now, from within UltraEdit, choose "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" from the View|Set Font dialog box.
6. In some cases, your PC may be set up poorly and any font will look blocky. The best way to fix this is to:
a) Open Display Properties by right clicking on an empty portion of your desktop and selecting Properties from the menu.



b) Choose the Effects button from the Appearance tab.



c) Tick on font smoothing and choose ClearType -- Ok your way out



d) Also note that if you are using an LCD monitor, and don't have it set at it's nominal resolution, it will always look bad.

[Alun Phillips]

The fonts you use everyday in documents and spreadsheets are called proportional or variable width fonts, becuase the width of each character is different. A 'W' is much wider than an 'I' for example. In Ultraedit, we don't use this type of font becuase the text on each line won't line up (particualrly with comment blocks). Instead, we use fixed width or mono-spaced fonts where each character ocupies exactly the same width. The following example shows the same code sample in Courier New and Arial. Courier isnt exactly a pretty font, but you can see that getting everything to line up does makes it easier to read.

Sub Example 'Using Courier New
   For lEachLoop = 1 To 3 Step 1        'Repeat for each item
      If lEachLoop = 2 Then             'If this is the second item
         lVariable = 6                  'Set the denominator
      Else                              'If this wasn't second item
         lVariable = lEachLoop + 3      'Set the denominator
      End If
      dAnother = lVariable / 15         'Calculate ratio
      Print dAnother                    'Print result
   Next lEachLoop                       'Process next 
End Sub

Sub Example 'Using Arial
   For lEachLoop = 1 To 3 Step 1        'Repeat for each item
      If lEachLoop = 2 Then             'If this is the second item
         lVariable = 6                  'Set the denominator
      Else                              'If this wasn't second item
         lVariable = lEachLoop + 3      'Set the denominator
      End If
      dAnother = lVariable / 15         'Calculate ratio
      Print dAnother                    'Print result
   Next lEachLoop                       'Process next 
End Sub

The fonts Sean recomends are all mono-spaced, but they have also been designed with programming in mind. A good programmers font should ...

• Have crisp, clear characters.
• have an extended character set.
• Make good use of whitespace.
• 'l', '1' and 'i' are easily distinguished
• '0', 'o' and 'O' are easily distinguished
• forward quotes are easily distinguished from back quotes (preferably mirrored)
• Punctuation characters are clear, especially braces, parenthesis and brackets

These features are all important, but for me, being able to distinguish between similar characters is the most important aspect of the fonts design. There is a lot of difference between Courier and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono in this regard, as the following example shows.



If you are as retentive about programming fonts as Sean and I, you can find out more information about them here.

[Scott Barber]

If you've got a really well commented and formatted XCM, which looks great in UE because of your font, and your effort to line up comments, etc... Take a look at it through the eyes of a client, going in to edit it within the XPAC editor (which is what most clients use)... I'm sure most people know that the tabs in the XPAC editor represent 6 spaces rather than what most would have set in UE (3), which throws everything off, causing it to look almost like Alun's example of the comment alignment with the different fonts.

Is there a way to change this setting, or to have it changable in future editions?

I just think it's a shame for a client to look through an XCM that we've spent alot of time and effort making look good, and not be able to read what is there. This may be my fault in the way I'm formatting my XCMs, but I digress...

[Sean Stewart]

Scott,
That's a good point. It would make a great minor enhancement -- you can log it on the minor enhancement forum here.

[Alun Phillips]

Originally Posted by Scott Barber

Take a look at it through the eyes of a client, going in to edit it within the XPAC editor (which is what most clients use)... I'm sure most people know that the tabs in the XPAC editor represent 6 spaces rather than what most would have set in UE (3), which throws everything off, causing it to look almost like Alun's example of the comment alignment with the different fonts.

Scott, I use the XPAC editor quite a bit becuase the debugger uses it. But I don't have the issue you raise, because I never use Tab characters to indent code. To help with this, I use an option in UltraEdit that makes it replace any tab characters with the appropriate number of spaces. It doesn't help when you hit the tab key inside the XPAC editor, but it does mean that when a client opens your scripts, they still look pretty.

To configure UltraEdit so it replaces tabs with spaces, open the configuration dialogue (Advanced | Configuration), select the Editor | Word Wrap & Tab Settings item in the tree then tick the Use Spaces Instead Of Tabs checkbox.

[Sean Stewart]

A good article on LOTS of NP fonts can be found here.