Consolas is a
monospaced
A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with variable-width fonts, where the letters and spaci ...
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are thousands o ...
designed by
Luc(as) de Groot. It is a part of the
ClearType Font Collection
ClearType is Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology in rendering text in a font system. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for additi ...
, a suite of fonts that take advantage of Microsoft's
ClearType
ClearType is Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology in rendering text in a font system. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for addit ...
font rendering technology. It has been included with
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
since
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
,
Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007 (codenamed Office 12) is an office suite for Windows, developed and published by Microsoft. It was officially revealed on March 9, 2006 and was the 12th version of Microsoft Office. It was released to manufacturing on Novem ...
and
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, and is available for download from Microsoft. It is the only standard Windows Vista font with a
slash through the zero character. It is the default font for
Microsoft Notepad as of
Windows 8
Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...
.
Characteristics
Consolas supports the following
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
layout features: stylistic alternates, localized forms, uppercase-sensitive forms,
oldstyle figures, lining figures, arbitrary fractions,
superscript
A subscript or superscript is a character (such as a number or letter) that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, whil ...
,
subscript
A subscript or superscript is a character (such as a number or letter) that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, whil ...
.
Although Consolas is designed as a replacement for
Courier New
Courier is a monospaced slab serif typeface. The typeface was designed by Howard "Bud" Kettler (1919–1999). Initially created for IBM's typewriters, it has been adapted for use as a computer font, and versions of it are installed on most deskt ...
, only 713
glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
s were initially available, as compared to Courier New (2.90)'s 1318 glyphs. In version 5.22 (included with Windows 7), support for Greek Extended, Combining Diacritical Marks For Symbols, Number Forms, Arrows, Box Drawing, and Geometric Shapes was added. In version 5.32 the total number of supported glyphs was 2735. In version 7.00 (as part of Windows 10 1909) there are 3030 glyphs in total.
Availability
This font, along with
Calibri
Calibri () is a digital sans-serif typeface family in the humanist or modern style. It was designed by Luc(as) de Groot in 2002–2004 and released to the general public in 2007, with Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista. In Office 2007, it r ...
,
Cambria
Cambria is a name for Wales, being the Latinised form of the Welsh name for the country, . The term was not in use during the Roman period (when Wales had not come into existence as a distinct entity). It emerged later, in the medieval period ...
,
Candara
Candara is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Gary Munch and commissioned by Microsoft. It is part of the ClearType Font Collection, a suite of fonts from various designers released with Windows Vista, all starting with the letter ''C' ...
,
Corbel
In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...
and
Constantia, is also distributed with Microsoft
Excel Viewer
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android and iOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro (comp ...
,
Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer
Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPo ...
, the
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...
Compatibility Pack for Microsoft Windows and the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac.
Consolas is also available for licensing from
Ascender Corporation
Ascender Corporation was a digital typeface foundry and software development company located in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Illinois in the United States. It was founded in 2004 by a team of software developers, typographers, and font ...
.
Bare Bones Software has licensed the font from Ascender for use in their text editor
BBEdit.
Alternatives
*
Inconsolata
Inconsolata is an open-source font created by Raph Levien and released under the SIL Open Font License. It is a humanist monospaced font designed for source code listing, terminal emulators, and similar uses. It was influenced by the proprietar ...
, an open source font inspired by Consolas, is available on
Google Fonts.
See also
*
Cascadia Code
References
External links
Microsoft Typography page*
{{Microsoft Windows Typefaces
Monospaced typefaces
Windows Vista typefaces
Typefaces and fonts introduced in 2006
Typefaces designed by Luc(as) de Groot
ClearType Font Collection
IPA typefaces