Non-proportional font

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
fixed character width, serifs

A non-proportional font , even hard step signature , fixed-width font , constant writing , equidistant font or monospaced font called, as opposed to having proportional font , a fixed-width ( Dickte ). The English terms for non-proportional fonts that are also frequently used in German-speaking countries are Monospace, Fixed Font or Teletype .

Example of a monospace font, sansserif / grotesque (with a fishes «i»)

Serif and sans serif monospace fonts

As with proportional fonts, there are fixed fonts in both the out of print typography coming serifierten execution, as well as sans serif.

  • The serif fonts create a reference to the typeface of a classic typewriter or a teleprinter ( typewriter fonts , such as Courier , or family representatives called Typewriter )
  • the sans serif fonts developed from the early, low-pixel screen fonts (for example the modern MS Consolas , or the Console / Sans Typewriter from the Lucida family).

Other well-known monospace fonts are Bitstream Vera Mono, Monaco and Letter Gothic .

Areas of application

For aesthetic, typographical and technical reasons, these fonts are used in printing, in addition to the typewriter font, for example for the distinction of Latin .

Since machine character recognition is easier with non-proportional fonts, the OCR-A and OCR-B fonts optimized for text recognition also fall into this category.

Non-proportional fonts can also be used in numerous ways on the computer , since some texts can be formatted with spaces independently of the word processor with little effort and little memory requirements.

This property is useful in

The typographical and aesthetic demands on a constant font are generally much lower, as the uneven type spacing never creates a really beautiful typeface. The achievable reading flow of the text image is therefore less than with proportional fonts. The main interest in the use of constant fonts lies in the clarity of the overall layout and in the distinguishability of certain characters. In particular, pixel fonts from the early days of EDP, which had to work with very few pixels per character, make characters that can be very similar in proportional fonts (e.g. digits zero or one and letters " O " and " I ") clearly This was mostly done with exaggerated serifs and a slash through the zero.

Examples

Takimata     EUR  134,50
Sanctus      EUR    3,00
Dolore       EUR   12,10
------------------------
             EUR  149,60

Typewriter style table 

+--------------------------------+
| Verzeichnisse                  |
| +----------------------------+ |
| |.                           | |
| |..                          | |
| |bin                         | |
| |boot                        | |
| |dev                         | |
| |etc                         | |
| |home                        | |
| |lib                         | |
| |lib64                       | |
| |lost+found                  | |
| +------↓(+)-----------45%----+ |
| +----------------------------+ |
| |/                           | |
| +----------------------------+ |
+--------------------------------+
|   <   OK    >  <Abbrechen>     |
+--------------------------------+

A " semi-graphic " file selection box , generated with the program dialog

Representation on the computer

Fixed fonts are specified on the computer (both in desktop publishing and in the screen display of the end user) using special markups, for example in HTML using elements such as ( teletype , obsolete), ( preformatted , 'preformatted') or ( (programming) code , programming instruction), which are generally preset with a constant font: font<tt><pre><code>

Text pattern dd

     

Textmuster pre

    

Textmuster code

Other changes to the typeface affect additional attributes assigned to these three HTML classes, as they are made either in the HTML code or the CSS declarations of a website , or the settings of the web browser - or other HTML-capable word processing programs - or in the operating system-wide settings .

Other markup languages , such as PostScript optimized for printing and the PDF based on it , or TeX and LaTeX for the formula set, but also all rich text formats for saving text documents (such as OpenDocument format or the older Microsoft Word DOC formats) can be used such methods.

Well-known monospaced fonts

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 15 Alignment, font styles, and horizontal rules - 15.2.1 Font style elements: the TT, I, B, BIG, SMALL, STRIKE, S, and U elements. In: HTML 4.01 Specification - W3C Recommendation. W3C , December 24, 1999, accessed August 25, 2009 .