When comparing Inconsolata vs MonoLisa, the Slant community recommends Inconsolata for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Inconsolata is ranked 52nd while MonoLisa is ranked 54th. The most important reason people chose Inconsolata is:
The characters in Inconsolata have a slightly "wide" appearance that aids in readability, especially at small font sizes.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Characters readable even at small sizes
The characters in Inconsolata have a slightly "wide" appearance that aids in readability, especially at small font sizes.
Pro Excellent readability
Very clear, distinct characters with decent spacing make Inconsolata very readable.
Pro Efficient scalability
Inconsolata scales well without loss of readability.
Pro Slashed zero characters are distinguishable from capital "O" and "Q" characters
Inconsolata-g screws this up by replacing the slashed zero with a dotted zero. A dotted zero is better than a zero with nothing in it, but worse than a slashed zero.
Pro Open source
It's an open source font, meaning it's freely available.
Pro No visible character breaks
Inconsolata renders lines in TUIs without visible character breaks; apparently unlike Inconsolata-g.
Pro Widely available
Inconsolata is available in the package managers of almost every open source OS.
Pro Customizable OpenType features downloads
The website offers customizable downloads for editors that don't support OpenType features natively.
Pro Script variant
It comes with script variant for italics.
Pro Ligatures
The typeface supports over 120 optionally enabled ligatures for common coding tasks.
Pro Italics
The typeface comes with an italic version.
Pro Space
Space used by the characters has been carefully balanced to keep them light to read.
Pro Reading flow
The characters have been designed to flow into each other so that the font feels easy to read.
Pro Distinction
Specific care has been put to make programming characters such as 1, i, and l or O or 0 easy to tell apart.
Pro Wider than usual
As it's wider, this means there's more space for designing characters like "m".
Cons
Con Arched braces
Too much arched braces, decreases clarity, touching characters almost.
Con Not free
This font requires a purchase in order to be used. The cheapest version ('Basic') is 60 dollars. There is a free trial, though.
Con Wider than usual
As it's wider, this means a short adjustment period may be required. If you have a limited amount of horizontal space, the wider glyphs may be problematic as well.
