
From http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html


Inconsolata will be my first serious original font release. It is a monospace
font, designed for code listings and the like, in print.  There are a great
many "programmer fonts," designed primarily for use on the screen, but in most
cases do not have the attention to detail for high resolution rendering.

Inconsolata draws from many inspirations and sources. I was particularly struck
by the beauty of Luc(as) de Groot's Consolas, which is his monospaced design
for Microsoft's upcoming Vista release. This font, similar to his earlier
TheSansMono, demonstrated clearly to me that monospaced fonts do not have to
suck.

First and foremost, Inconsolata is a humanist sans design. I strove for the
clarity and clean lines of Adrian Frutiger's Avenir (the lowercase "a", in
particular, pays homage to this wonderful design), but also looked to Morris
Fuller Benton's Franklin Gothic family for guidance on some of my favorite
glyphs, such as lowercase "g" and "S", and, most especially, the numerals.

Designing a monospace font poses unique challenges. I have carefully studied
many other monospaced fonts to see how they solve these problems. Many of the
available monospace fonts are adaptations of existing proportionally-spaced
fonts, but some, such as Letter Gothic, draw strength from being their own
designs. I hope Inconsolata upholds that tradition.

Some details will be most apparent in print, such as the subtle curves in
lowercase "t", "v", "w", and "y". Inconsolata also borrows "micro-serifs" from
some Japanese Gothic fonts, which enhance the appearance of crispness and
legibility.

I'm still working on completing this font, refining the base ASCII set and
filling out the Latin 1, 2, and 9 complements. It will be released under the
new Open Font License of SIL. Completion of this font is being generously
sponsored by the TeX Users Group Development Fund. If you like this font and
want to see more sponsored and released freely, please consider donating to
TUG.


--  
Raph Levien


