Monaco is a
monospaced
A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with Typeface#Proportion, variable-width fonts, where t ...
sans-serif
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...
designed by
Susan Kare
Susan Kare ( "care"; born February 5, 1954) is an American artist and graphic designer, who contributed graphical user interface, interface elements and typefaces for the first Apple Inc., Apple Macintosh 128k, Macintosh personal computer from ...
,
Kris Holmes, and
Charles Bigelow. It ships with
macOS
macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
and has been present in all releases of Macintosh system software since the first Macintosh in 1984. Characters are distinct, and it is difficult to confuse
0 (figure zero) and
O (uppercase O), or
1 (figure one),
(
vertical bar
The vertical bar, , is a glyph with various uses in mathematics, computing, and typography. It has many names, often related to particular meanings: Sheffer stroke (in logic), pipe, bar, or (literally, the word "or"), vbar, and others.
Usage
...
),
I (uppercase i) and
l (lowercase L). A unique feature of the font is the high curvature of its parentheses as well as the width of its square brackets, the result of these being that an empty pair of parentheses or square brackets will strongly resemble a circle or square, respectively.
Monaco has been released in at least four forms.
* The outline form of Monaco is loosely similar to
Lucida Mono and created as a
TrueType
TrueType is an Computer font#Outline fonts, outline font standardization, standard developed by Apple Inc., Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe Inc., Adobe's PostScript fonts#Type 1, Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the ...
font for System 6 and 7.
* The original
bitmap
In computing, a bitmap (also called raster) graphic is an image formed from rows of different colored pixels. A GIF is an example of a graphics image file that uses a bitmap.
As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a partic ...
Monaco came in 9- and 12-point sizes. Both had different letter shapes from the outline form and, until the release of
Mac OS 8.5 in 1998, did not have the above-mentioned distinguishing marks.
* A revision of bitmap Monaco ships with Mac OS 8.5 onward that, among other cosmetic changes, adds some disambiguation features to
0 (figure zero) and
l (lowercase L) that were previously absent. It still appears in the
ROM
Rom, or ROM may refer to:
Biomechanics and medicine
* Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient
* Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac
* ...
s of even
New World Macs, and is still available in recent macOS releases (size 9, with disabled antialiasing).
*
MacsBug uses a modification of bitmap Monaco that adds disambiguation features to
I (uppercase i) and
0 (figure zero).
The original Monaco 9-point bitmap font was designed so that when a
Compact Macintosh
A Compact Macintosh (or Compact Mac) is an all-in-one Apple Mac computer with a display integrated in the computer case, beginning with the original Macintosh 128K. Compact Macs include the original Macintosh through to the Color Classic sold ...
window was displayed full screen, such as for a
terminal emulator
A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote term ...
program, it would result in a standard
text user interface
In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...
display of 80 columns by 25 lines.
With the August 2009 release of
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard,
Menlo was introduced as the default monospaced font instead of Monaco in
Terminal and
Xcode
Xcode is a suite of developer tools for building apps on Apple devices. It includes an integrated development environment (IDE) of the same name for macOS, used to develop software for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS. It w ...
,
However, Monaco remains a part of macOS. Monaco is the default font in the current
Python IDLE when used on a Mac running
OS X El Capitan
OS X El Capitan ( ) () is the twelfth major release of macOS (named OS X at the time of El Capitan's release), Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh. It focuses mainly on performance, stability, and security. Followi ...
.
Furthermore, in September 2015,
Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan introduced SF Mono, a monospaced variant of the
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
font family, as the default monospaced font instead of
Menlo.
As of
MacOS Sequoia
macOS Sequoia (version 15) is the twenty-first and current major release of Apple Inc., Apple's macOS operating system, the successor to macOS Sonoma. It was announced at Worldwide Developers Conference#2024, WWDC 2024 on June 10, 2024. In li ...
15.2, the version of Monaco included is 17.0d1e5.
See also
*
Apple typography
Apple Inc. uses a large variety of typefaces in its marketing, operating systems, and industrial design with each product cycle. These change throughout the years with Apple's change of style in their products. This is evident in the design ...
*
ProFont
ProFont is a monospace typeface, font available in many formats. It is intended to be used for programming in Integrated development environment, IDE environments and it is available in Bitmap font, bitmap and TrueType versions for various Platfor ...
References
External links
*
*
Monospaced typefaces
Sans-serif typefaces
Apple Inc. typefaces
Macintosh operating systems
MacOS
Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1983
Typefaces designed by Susan Kare
Typefaces designed by Kris Holmes
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