Java Magazine, September/October 2016
ORACLE COM JAVAMAGAZINE SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2016 07 letters to the editor Why Monospaced Fonts In your editorial in the July August issue you mention that the code font is under discussion Why not use a nice sans serif proportional font like Tahoma or any other open font Most important Do syntax highlighting Monospaced fonts for modern code samples are completely old fashioned and totally horrible Nobody needs to have columns vertically aligned anymore as was useful in COBOL and Fortran times The advantage of syntax highlighting is obvious It is so much easier to see keywords constants comments and so on with little efort Which scheme is used for colors italics and font weight is highly subjective of course Hubert Kauker Germany Andrew Binstock responds I can see no possible benefit from giving up monospaced fonts for coding I would note that every reputable website and publisher uses monospace In addition so does just about every developer I know by which I mean every developer whose code Ive seen Syntax highlighting is not ideal The first reason is that every reader has a diferent preferred scheme Moreover given our generally short printed listings with downloadable code available for the entire codebase the benefit would be small while the efort and cost required would be significant Contact Us We welcome comments suggestions grumbles kudos article proposals and chocolate chip cookies All but the last two might be edited for publication Write to us at javamag_ us@ oracle com For other ways to reach us see the last page of this issue 13 Billion Devices Run Java ATMs Smartcards POS Terminals Blu ray Players Set Top Boxes Multifunction Printers PCs Servers Routers Switches Parking Meters Smart Meters Lottery Systems Airplane Systems IoT Gateways Programmable Logic Controllers Optical Sensors Wireless M2M Modules Access Control Systems Medical Devices Building Controls Automobiles 1 Development Platform
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