Want to know: Use editor font in watch windows?

One of the recent requests in my post Wanted: Debugger User Interface Feedback was to allow the font of the watch window to be different from that of other toolwindows in Visual Studio like it was in version 6.0.  See the post for more details.

 

I agree that this is something we need to do; however, what is the default font we should use?  Should it be a proportional or variable-width font like Tahoma, Arial, or Verdana or should we use a constant-width font such as Courier?  VS7.0 has always used a proportional font, while VC 6.0 used Courier.

 

First, I'm just talking about default font here.  Though the current set of available bits don't allow the user to separately control the font in the debugger windows, it is something we're planning on before release. 

 

My current idea is to default to the same font as the editor.  After all, the watch and callstack windows both essentially display snippets of source, so why not use the exact same font as what the user is accustomed to seeing source?

 

What do you think?  BTW, be careful about stating that variable-width fonts use less horizontal space than constant width fonts.  This is not necessarily the case and is highly dependent on the fonts chosen for comparison!

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 17, 2004
  I'm happy with the watch windows inheriting the font from the editor settings. I currently have both my editor and Text Output Tool Windows set to use 8pt Tahoma. (If a proportional font was good enough for the code samples in The C++ Programming Language, 3rd Edition, it's good enough for me. :-) )
  
  The problem with this is that the Memory Windows inherit the setting (I believe from the "Text Editor" setting). A raw dump of memory is almost impossible to read with a proportional font. If just one debugger window needs its own setting for the font, this is it.
• Anonymous
  April 22, 2004
  I have always been partial to Andale Mono as the font in my IDEs (VS6, 7). It is a crisp constant-width font that used to be freely downloadable. I don't know if that is the case any more. It has everything that I like about Tahoma or Verdana with the bonus of being constant-width.
  
  No matter what you end up choosing, though, giving the developer the ability to override that default is key.
  
• Anonymous
  April 29, 2004
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  June 22, 2004
  The comment has been removed