monospace fonts without anti-aliasing for terminal

[uncleMonty]

I spend a good chunk of the day looking at a terminal window or other fixed-width environment for coding. I get very crisp and readable text using Monaco 10-points with anti-aliasing turned off--it's the only font I have installed that seems to be displayed as a bit-mapped font (just for that one size). In fact in this font the 10-point characters without anti-aliasing are more readable than in the 11-, 12- and maybe even 13-point sizes, whether the larger ones are anti-aliased or not.

Sometimes though when my eyes are tired and I'm just on the laptop screen, not hooked up to a display with bigger pixels, 10 points is a little on the small side and I wish I could get a similar non-anti-aliased crispness with some font at an optical size that is just a bit bigger.

I tried a bunch of fonts listed in various "top ten fonts for programmers": Aurulent, Consolas, Deja Vu Sans Mono, Droid Sans Mono, Inconsolata, Magda Clean Mono, Menlo, Panic Sans, Ubuntu Mono... but I didn't find a single one that displayed crisply like Monaco 10-pt. Try it in a Terminal window or in Text Edit - zoom in and the difference is remarkable.

Does anyone know of a source for modern monospaced fonts that include bit maps for particular sizes so that they may be displayed without anti-aliasing?

 

[kmdoran]

uncleMonty - This is an older post, but I'm curious, did you ever find a suitable font?

For fixed-width fonts with anti-aliasing turned OFF, I have found Andale Mono 13pt to work well.

Anonymous Pro is a free font that comes with bitmap versions for sizes 10-13. (See their usage note to ensure you configure Mac OS X properly to take advantage of this: http://www.marksimonson.com/info/anonymous-pro-usage-notes)

Also, this site has screenshot samples with anti-alias off:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/30040/Font-Survey-42-of-the-Best-Monospaced-Programming

Hope this helps!

UPDATE: I also just came across Source Code Pro, which has specific "Light" and "ExtraLight" variants specifically designed to combat Mac OS X's "fuzzy/bold" rendering with anti-aliasing. I had tried it, but not with Light/ExtraLight + anti-aliasing on. What a difference! Could become my new default. Credit: http://opensourcehacker.com/2012/10/07/go-pro-and-your-eyes-will-thank-you