When comparing Dalton Maag Ubuntu Mono vs Apple Monaco, the Slant community recommends Dalton Maag Ubuntu Mono for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Dalton Maag Ubuntu Mono is ranked 11th while Apple Monaco is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Dalton Maag Ubuntu Mono is:
Line thickness, shape, and spacing help you to recognize characters and words correctly the first time through, without your eyes having to skip back and re-read.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Excellent readability
Line thickness, shape, and spacing help you to recognize characters and words correctly the first time through, without your eyes having to skip back and re-read.
Pro Pleasant aesthetics
The font has a rounded, smooth aesthetic that is particularly appealing.
Pro Easily distinguishable characters
There are dotted zeroes in Ubuntu Mono so to distinguish from the letter "O" (Oh), while the lowercase letter "l" (ell) is very different from the number "1" (one).
Pro Legible even at small sizes
The fonts retain legibility and under subpixel rendering at small sizes.
Pro Many languages
1,200 glyphs, 200-250 languages (native languages of 3 billion people).
Pro Open source font
SIL Open Font License.
Pro Easy on user's eyes
Monaco's rendering is similar to that of Consolas but slightly more playful. Each character seems to be a tiny bit larger when compared to Consolas, yet code takes up the same amount of space.
Pro Good differentiation between clashing characters
The curly braces are easily distinguishable from parentheses, "0" is distinguishable from "O", and "1" is distinguishable from "l", to name but a few.
Pro Beautiful braces, perfect parens
Parentheses are half-circles. Square brackets, half-squares. Curly braces, unmistakable. Geometric, classy, fun, and most importantly clear.
Other fonts' bracket delimiters might start to look lifeless and wilted.
Especially well-suited to those who color their brackets as the colors show even against light backgrounds.
Pro Excellent legibility at non-antialiased small sizes
This font shines for legibility at non-antialiased small sizes. It was originally designed as a 9 pt bitmap font. This is excellent for when maximizing on-screen code is a priority.
Pro Small file size
Even if you are struggling with memory, this font is no concern. Its ttf file is just about 50 kb.
Cons
Con Lowercase "i" (eye) is tailed, and too similar to lowercase "l" (ell)
Same with Hack and Red Hat Mono.
Con Many characters seem imbalanced
Some of the characters don't feel like they match well which can be distracting.
Con The font is too small
Ubuntu's 13pt looks like 10pt of another font.
Con Lowercase "m" is weird and stands out
The lowercase "m" in Ubuntu Mono really stands out because of its unusual shape, which disrupts the user's attention when reading.
Con Dotted zero characters less distinguishable
Dotted zero characters are much less distinguishable than those that are slashed.
Con No support for combined unicode characters
For example, x̄ is rendered as x ̄.
Con Only comes with Mac OS X
While it generally only came with OS X, you can try here for installing on other platforms.
Con Ability to select different anti-aliasing grades was dropped
Before OS X Snow Leopard, it was possible to apply varying degrees of anti-aliasing to the font. At present, the previously "medium" anti-aliasing option is the only choice.
