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| Typeface | Monaco |
|---|---|
| Category | Sans-serif |
| Classifications | Monospace |
| Designer(s) | Susan Kare |
| Foundry | Apple Computer |
Monaco is a monospaced sans-serif typeface designed by Susan Kare and Kris Holmes. The face shipped with Mac OS X and was already present with previous versions of the Mac operating system. Unlike many monospaced typefaces originating with strike-on typewriting faces, Monaco does not immediately reveal the consistency of character width. Characters are distinct, and it is difficult to confuse 0 (figure zero) and O (uppercase O), or 1 (figure one) | (Vertical bar) and l (lowercase l).
Monaco has been released in at least three forms. The original was a bitmap monospaced font that still appears in the ROMs of even New World Macs, and is still the default form in 9 point size even on OS X. The second is the outline form, loosely similar to Lucida Console and created as a TrueType font for System 6 and 7; this is the standard. There was briefly a third known as MPW, since it was designed to be used with the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop IDE; it was essentially a straight conversion of the bitmap font into an outline font with the addition of some of the same disambiguation features as were added to the TrueType Monaco.
See also
External links
- Finding the Best Programmer's Font (sample)
- Folklore site article on early Apple typography
- The MPW font can still be downloaded from apple.com via ftp, using this link
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
