Subject: bug#51405: Set default font on Windows to Consolas-11

From: Vince Salvino <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 06:28:16 +0000

Courier New generally looks terrible on modern screens, as it has been neglected for decades since its original digitization for use with 640x480 CRT screens in the early 90s. Many of the character glyphs are only 1 pixel wide and look like hairlines on an LCD screen.

To address this, Windows Vista and later ship with Consolas, the default monospaced font used in Notepad, CMD (terminal), and other built-in programs. It is also used by default in nearly every other text/code editor, web browser, and terminal program when requesting a monospace font. Personally speaking, it is magnitudes more legible and easier to read. Consolas looks similar to DejaVu Mono, which is generally the default in GNU systems. 

This patch changes the default font in MS-Windows to Consolas-11. It will still fall back to the previous default (Courier New-10) on older systems where the font is not available. I want to be clear that this is not a change for the sake of choosing a fashionable font... Consolas has been the default monospace font in Windows for 15 years!

Vince Salvino