6x13 fixed vs Inconsolata

6x13 fixed is the apex of bitmap fonts. It has a nice, defined character set and great proportions for quantity of text onscreen, making for excellent readability. It is aesthetically pleasing for a bitmap font and has been deservedly termed 'classic'.

At a small text size, each character has a limited resolution. A character size of 6x13 pixels means only 78 pixels per character. Modern fonts are designed to be scalable and are less legible at these small sizes. Using bitmap fonts increases legibility by eliminating scaling and sub-pixel aliasing artifacts. Some scalable fonts include "ppems" embedded bitmaps for this reason.

6x13 is the classic fixed monospace bitmap font that is expected to be available on every X server. It is part of the misc-fixed family. These fonts were handcrafted for readability in a terminal.

It is distributed alongside the X Window System.

The characters in Inconsolata have a slightly "wide" appearance that aids in readability, especially at small font sizes.

Very clear, distinct characters with decent spacing make Inconsolata very readable.

Inconsolata scales well without loss of readability.

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.

It's an open source font, meaning it's freely available.

Inconsolata renders lines in TUIs without visible character breaks; apparently unlike Inconsolata-g.

Inconsolata is available in the package managers of almost every open source OS.