Bitstream DejaVu Sans Mono vs Microsoft Consolas

It's easy to distinguish between characters such as I, 1, l, O, and 0 in DejaVu Sans Mono.

Reading the text is pleasant and effortless. Letter forms combine nicely into words.

The font is well spaced and doesn't break up words.

DejaVu Sans Mono has one of the most complete Unicode fonts available. This means you have access to a wide range of special symbols including mathematical symbols like arrows, operators, and special alphabets. This is useful for certain languages that require special characters like Agda.

Some languages allow using these characters optionally. There are editor modes that display characters like this without changing the underlying file, much like syntax highlighting. The Emacs modes for OCaml and Haskell are prime examples.

It's also included in modern versions of Windows.

The Sans Mono version is graphically close to Andale Mono (Microsoft core web font), slightly bolder, with the added bonus of the bold font being the same width as the regular one (unlike Andale Mono). It is a nice property with some syntax highlighting text editors.

For MobaXterm users, this font closely mirrors the embedded MobaFont so they can use a monospace font across other applications.

There is good overall disambiguation of similar-looking characters in Consolas. For example, there are slashed zeroes, meaning the number "0" (zero) can be differentiated from the letter "O" (Oh).

The font is available on machines running Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1, as well as part of Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. Otherwise it can be downloaded from Microsoft's homepage. It can also be set up on OS X machines with instructions on how to do it available here.

Consolas has a good appearance and character without being too distracting.

Consolas is really narrow compared to most monospace fonts. The more narrow each symbol, the more text you see on the line.

There are true italics for this font, compared to obliques with most other monospaced fonts.

Consolas supports 30+ unicode ranges including Greek, Cyrillic, and Thai for a total of 2735 glyphs.

This font reads so smooth that it actually feels annoying to see it being treated as a programming font. For god's sake, don't treat it like a programming font, because this is the best general-use sans-serif font in my opinion. The humanist letterforms and the balanced monospace design are surely a great combination. Not to mention, unlike many other fonts, Consolas is the one to get character shapes "right". The "support bars" design on i and l allows for comfortable text reading unlike the abstract curvy design on some other monospaced fonts. And the r is also done properly, it curves all the way down.

Consolas can be used with the vim plugin Powerline if the following patch is applied: Patch.

When writing and reading text in LaTeX text editor, the content is code and text. Code can be read in other fonts, but reading main text in programming fonts other than Consolas can get you frustrated and irritated.