Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Using Consolas as the Windows Console Font

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Using Consolas as the Windows Console Font

Posted in TechEd

Consolasconsole

Simon Guest and I have been trying to figure out how to use our new favorite font, Consolas, as a font for the command console.

~~(I'm afraid I can't distribute Consolas online or provide a download out of abject fear. That said, you can find it in any version of the Longhorn bits.)~~

Seems you can get Consolas out of the Microsoft "Powerpoint Presentation Viewer" free of charge here, which, as a side effect, installs the new Vista fonts. Thanks to Tyler Cole for the tip.

You can add it to the list of fonts available to the console by adding it to

HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/Console/TrueTypeFont

There is a KB article discribing how to add a font to the command prompt.

In my case I added a REG_SZ with the name "00" and the value "Consolas." Then you have to REBOOT. Apparently the reboot is important otherwise you won't get the correct results and you'll see MS Sans Serif instead.

Consolas

Posted at 2005-06-11 07:32 PM by Scott
Comments [11]
Permalink

Tracked by:
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Sunday, June 12, 2005 6:40:57 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Great tip, but my font in the cmd window is always in italic. How could I avoid this behaviour?

Giampaolo Bellavite

Sunday, June 12, 2005 7:38:41 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Personally, I've been quite pleased with the results of using a proportional-spaced font (such as Tahoma) for code. Yes, it takes a little while to get used to, but once you do, code reads a bit more like text than just code.

J. Daniel Smith

Sunday, June 12, 2005 9:57:46 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Giampaolo, I had this happen to me, so I moved the Consolas fonts OUT of the Fonts folder the moved them BACK in and it was fixed.

Scott Hanselman

Monday, June 13, 2005 6:17:43 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

how about a screenshot?

Ben Scheirman

Tuesday, June 14, 2005 3:06:10 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Great! Thank you Scott, it works now (how did you find this trick of moving out the ttf from the fonts folder?? :)
Screenshot here: http://www.bellavite.com/blog/File/consolasscreen.gif

Giampaolo Bellavite

Tuesday, June 14, 2005 4:10:03 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

okay, i'm digging into my longhorn bits and don't see the font -- what is the TTF file name?

tim

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 7:44:18 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

It would be helpful to see a screenshot including the following critical characters when choosing a fixed-width font for programming:

'"`
:;.,
{}()[]<>
0Oo
Ll1Ii|

I currently use Monaco as my default fixed-width font in as many places as possible, but I'm always open to suggestions.

see http://www.lowing.org/fonts/

travis

Tuesday, June 21, 2005 2:13:41 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I noticed in your registry some settings for international charaters. Do you know if Consolas or any other monospaced font will support a full unicode set?