Monaco, Inconsolata and Panic Sans

Lately I’ve been organizing and touching up on the finish of my digital workspace. One of the things I tried to improve was my choice of monospaced typeface, in particular for displaying code. The obvious and classical alternative Monaco face two fearsome rivals; Inconsolata and Panic Sans (Derivation of Bistream Vera Sans) both two modern, anti-alias friendly and unicode-isch typefaces.

• Monaco – Use for low-res displays in small sized (9 or 10 px) without anti-alias.
• Inconsolata – Use for detailed, anti-aliased renderings, in print and/or on screen in sizes above 13 px.
• Panic Sans – Very much like Inconsolata, but fits better in smaller sizes and anti-aliased.

My current monofont of choice is Inconsolata. At 14px on screen (well, it’s more like 11px in reality) I’ve been giving Panic Sans a fair chance for a few weeks now, and the time has come to evaluate Inconsolata.