When comparing Terminus vs Inconsolata, the Slant community recommends Terminus for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Terminus is ranked 18th while Inconsolata is ranked 52nd. The most important reason people chose Terminus is:
Many fonts look terrible without anti-aliasing. Not Terminus, it looks clear and crisp.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Looks great even without anti-aliasing
Many fonts look terrible without anti-aliasing. Not Terminus, it looks clear and crisp.
Pro Beautiful crunch pixels
Pro Pixel-perfect rendering
No blurry characters ever. Every pixel on the screen is used to its full capacity.
Pro Terminus is not going fat
Many fonts are fatty when they are used relatively large in size but Terminus does not have this issue. And now it works with IDEA.
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.
Cons
Con Italics are not very appealing
Italicized Terminus TTF doesn't appear as aesthetically pleasing as it was intended.
Con It doesn't look very nice
Con Square
Con Easy to be confused with different brands of the same or similar name
Like Terminus (Russian production company), Terminus (terminal emulator) or Termius (SSH client).
Con Arched braces
Too much arched braces, decreases clarity, touching characters almost.