Java Reference
In-Depth Information
of the font depending on the character. For example, in a proportional font, the
letter
m
is wider than the letter
i
. This makes the font easier to read, which is why
the majority of fonts installed on your system are proportional fonts. Proportional
fonts have a shortcoming, however: Because the width can vary from character to
character, it's not always possible to achieve exact alignment and indentation,
which can be a problem when you're editing code.
Monospace fonts, also known as
fixed-pitch
or
fixed-width
fonts, use the same
width for every character, eliminating this alignment problem. Courier is the most
common example of a monospace font. The font browser has a
Show only mono-
space fonts
option: Selecting it hides all the proportional fonts on your system.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't consider selecting a proportional font
for your editor. Many proportional fonts have only subtle differences between
characters widths, making alignment problems less apparent. Personal prefer-
ence and font availability will determine the best choice for you.
You may want to consider using anti-aliased fonts in the editor. Anti-
aliasing attempts to smooth the text fonts to make them more readable.
You can enable anti-aliased fonts for the editor through the
Appearance
options in your
IDE
Settings
.
TIP
Adjusting the font size and line spacing
Next to the font selector are options for adjusting the size and spacing of the font.
The font size is specified in points and defaults to a value of 12. You may want to
adjust this value up or down depending on your preferred resolution and
selected font.
The
Line spacing
option controls the amount of space between each line of
text in the editor. By default, the line spacing is 1.0, which is normal spacing. The
line spacing value adjusts the spacing relative to normal spacing, so 2.0 means
twice as much space and 0.75 means 75% spacing. You can specify any value here,
including fractional values, but numbers between 0.5 and 2.0 work best. By
reducing line spacing, you fit more rows of text onto the screen at any one time;
we tend to bring our spacing down to 0.9 or so.
Controlling font styling and color
For each color scheme property that supports foreground text (some properties
only affect the background), you can enable bold, italics, or both. If neither is
selected, the normal font weight is used. These options are combined with the
three-color options, foreground color, background color, and text effects, to
determine the final font style for the selected property.
