When comparing Apple Monaco vs Monoid, the Slant community recommends Apple Monaco for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Apple Monaco is ranked 12th while Monoid is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose Apple Monaco is:
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.
Specs
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Pros
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.
Pro Customisable
The user can adjust letter-spacing, line-height, and choose alternate characters prior to downloading.
Pro Novel use of ligatures to display ascii character combinations as symbols
The common expression '!=' is displayed as '≠', '>=' as '≥' *, while maintaining the fixed width double-space that these characters would normally take, so as to maintain text alignment.
- Many others are supported too - see site for details.
Pro Open source
Monoid is open source meaning it's freely available to anyone.
Pro Sharpness
Pro Larger and easier to read with thin condensed letters
Pro Fine without retina
Probably the only one that is.
Cons
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.
Con Very narrow
Con No bold-italic style
Monoid doesn't offer a style that is both bold and italic.