Zugg Software :: View topic - Is the Consolas font redistributable yet?

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:02 pm

This is kind of a weird place to ask this question, but does anyone know if the new Consolas font from Vista can be redistributed now that Vista has been publically released? In the past, Microsoft made the font available if you downloaded a trial version of Visual Studio. But now that Vista is public, I wonder if the restrictions have been removed. I'd really love to distribute it with CMUD if I can.

Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 6:29 pm

The only place I could find to download it from Microsoft was here which lists VBasic as one of the requirements. I don't think it's distributable.

And also, take a look at this comparison - the first has ClearType enabled and the second doesn't. Might not be the best idea to make it the default, just if that was your intention, just in case users don't have ClearType on.

Wizard Joined: 15 Jan 2002 Posts: 1644 Location: USA

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/RedistributionFAQ.mspx

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 5:07 pm

You'll notice that the page you linked to hasn't been updated since March 2005. So it doesn't really help provide information on the Vista fonts now that Vista has been publicly released.

Anyway, Fang is correct that the font only looks good with ClearType enabled. Anyone with an LCD screen should have ClearType enabled, but I know many people still use older CRT monitors. So I guess I'll ignore this for now. But for LCD users, Consolas is a *very* nice font to use for MUDding or programming. Hopefully Microsoft will make it more available to Windows XP users in the future.

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 5:30 pm

Will there be/is there a way to set the font of the settings editor to Consolas if you are using Vista?

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

I tried ClearType on my laptop LCD and it looked fuzzier to me than without it switched on (it's very clear without it). I even tried going through the whole wizard thing that IE7 gets you to do when you upgrade. Maybe some peculiarity of my LCD, resolution of vision.

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:53 am

I have been using consolas for the better part of a year without MSOffice.
I forget where i got it, but it does seem to be distributable.

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 4:58 pm

Fang: Yes, you will be able to set the font used in the package editor. I'm using Consolas there myself right now :)

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

Can get Consolas for free (and legally) by using the free download of Visual Studio Express. Just doesn't look like it could be bundled with CMUD sadly.