Monospaced pixel fonts for programming.
The proggy fonts are a set of fixed-width screen fonts that are designed for code listings. They are distributed as ttf, fon, pcf, and dfont files. The fon format works well with Visual Studio, a command prompt, Photoshop, etc. Some editors do not recognize fon fonts in which case you should use the ttf version (12pt PC, 16pt Mac). Not all fonts are available in all formats.
Each font only comes in one size that it looks good at. The ttf fonts should also be used at their intended point size as they are basically conversions of the pixel based bitmap versions. The fonts were optimized while coding in C or C++. For this reason, characters like the * are vertically centered as * usually means dereference or multiply, but never 'to the power of' like in Fortran.
The {}s are centered horizontally (in case you align braces vertically), the zero looks different from the capital oh, and there is never any confusion between ells, ones, and eyes.
Additionally, the arithmetic operators (+ - * < >) are all axis aligned... unlike the last ones you just saw.
These fonts will not benefit form having ClearType turned on. You're better off using some other ttf font that is curve-based and not pixel-based if you want sub-pixel anti-aliasing.
Most fonts contain the Latin-1 character set (ISO 8859-1) except ProggyCleanCE.ttf which can be used for the Czech language (Latin-2). You can try it if the characters you want are missing and you were able to read English enough to understand this paragraph.
Lastly, the two Webby fonts are not monospaced, but may be useful for other purposes like websites.
