FONTASTIC — Choosing a Font for Marking Up Existing PCB-images, Schematics; adding/changing RefDes<>Values etc...

[Feral Feline]

I have a PedalPCB project where I have two PCB images, one with RefDes and one with values.
Instead of constantly swapping between the two PCB images, I wanted to mark up one of them so that a single image has both RefDes and associated values.

There isn't a lot of space to have both RefDes and Values on one image, so I searched online for a short, squat font.
The search brought back garbage results about trouble-shooting font problems and all manner of font-dribble except decent suggestions for font-choices meeting my criteria.

Instead of revising my search numerous times and hoping to luck out at some point, I figured it would take less time to just see what's available on my Mac...




I narrowed it down to these two Font Finalists:



I like that there's a dot in the zero of the Andale Mono, wishing Skia had a slash or dot, something to differentiate the zero from the letter "O".

Skia is more compact and can squeeze into tighter spots; the ascenders/descenders in the numbers potentially make the numbers more legible, but then again the ascenders and descenders may infringe on the surrounding original-images text.

Andale Mono may not be as compact, but it has nice, even spacing for the numbers.






I think it's Skia for the win.

 

[Hal Harvey]

I like Andale. That said don’t hate Skia.

I think the zero does it for me.

 

[andare]

I like a mono typeface like Courier, mostly because my favorite professor in universty used it in his worksheets.

 

[Feral Feline]

I'm a huge fan of Courier!
Not for this application, though — I wanted a sans-serif font because serifs get harder to read when the font-size is diminutive.

 

[LukeFRC]

I'm a huge fan of Courier!
Not for this application, though — I wanted a sans-serif font because serifs get harder to read when the font-size is diminutive.

Debatable

 

[LukeFRC]

I don’t entirely follow what you’re doing but DIN has pretty good legibility at small slives and the condensed version will save you space

 

[Feral Feline]

DIN Condensed wasn't working for me. Looks fine while typing, but then the tops of the characters are getting cut off once I place the text;
only worked if I put in a carriage return, then the full height would display.

It's not so much the width, as the height that I need space saved: the last graphic I posted shows what I'm trying to do, add component values to a PCB graphic that already has RefDes taking up space. Compare the 100n in Andale Mono between C102 and R9 to the 100n in Skia between C4 and R101 — Skia seems to "breath" better.



"Debatable" — No, really, I am a fan of Courier, it's one of my favourite font-families.

 

[LukeFRC]

It was serifs being harder to read when smaller I was debating, it depends on the print/display medium too…

Ahh get you - would DIN be condensed enough you could run
R100 100n
On one line? Bold up one for definition between them?

 

[temol]

Some of my suggestions

 

[RetiredUnit1]

My go to fixed font is Lucida Console. No Kerning so works with columns of numbers and keeps the chord directly on top of the word instead of kinda on top.