When comparing DEC Terminal Modern vs Inconsolata, the Slant community recommends Inconsolata for most people. In the question“What are the best programming fonts?” Inconsolata is ranked 52nd while DEC Terminal Modern is ranked 78th. The most important reason people chose Inconsolata is:
The characters in Inconsolata have a slightly "wide" appearance that aids in readability, especially at small font sizes.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Great looking retro font.
I use 18-point DEC Terminal Modern for interacting with OpenVMS systems, with anti-aliasing and subpixel anti-aliasing. With a dark background and a soft white, amber, or green foreground, it's very reminiscent of the physical terminals, though I don't actually have one for comparison.
Unless you want an ultra-retro "rasterized" appearance, I would recommend it by far over either "Glass TTY VT220" or "VT220-mod".
A very slight "con" is that it doesn't work well with at least some of iTerm2's built-in Powerline glyphs. Spaces appear as filled blocks, for example.
Pro Interesting look
The look of DEC Terminal Modern is somewhat retro-inspired.
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 Arched braces
Too much arched braces, decreases clarity, touching characters almost.