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Dina Programming Font in TTF format

Written on October 7th, 2008

For a long time now, Dina has been my favorite programming font. I find it crisp, clean and very readable for the amount of pixel space it takes up (wide bowls, no unnecessary serifs). It’s certainly a nice change from Courier New. In my opinion, a great programming font is just as important as any other tool in the programmers toolbox.

Unfortunately, Dina does have one big pitfall. It’s only available in the bitmap based .fon format, which is notorious for bad portability. Incompatible on anything but Windows, and even some Windows applications will not read this format (Sun’s Java Netbeans IDE for example does not support it).

After a long day of various hacks and adjustments, I was able to convert the Dina font to a working TTF format. You can now benefit from the fruits of my labor using the link below:

Dina truetype font pack

Here is a preview for your viewing pleasure:

For those interested, this is a screenshot from the Netbeans IDE. I have been recently giving Netbeans and Eclipse a test drive in preparation for my upcoming developments in Java.

Posted in Download, Programming, Typography

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32 Responses to “Dina Programming Font in TTF format”

  1. housetier Says:
    October 8th, 2008 at 4:30 am

    Thank you very very much!

  2. Fris Says:
    October 9th, 2008 at 6:52 pm

    Awesome! Thanks a lot!!

  3. Rover Says:
    November 5th, 2008 at 9:45 am

    This is a great little font. Many thanks for the TTF version.

  4. crackpod Says:
    November 6th, 2008 at 4:21 am

    Hey, I was wondering what editor are you using? Mind telling me? I’m really interested. If it is SciTE could you contact me and send me the configuration file for this setup?

  5. Eurico Moita Says:
    November 7th, 2008 at 9:39 pm

    Thank you!!!! :)

  6. Nathaniel Sabanski Says:
    November 12th, 2008 at 6:55 pm

    @crackpod:

    The setup in the screenshot is Netbeans. Although i’m a huge fan of SciTE and use Notepad++ (based on SciTE) in all of my daily work. The Notepad++ colour scheme I use is called Ruby Blue, and can be found at http://3276.hu/project/port_of_ruby_blue.html.

    It’s unfortunate that the syntax colour customization in Notepad++ is a pain to do; as I really like the colour scheme I whipped up in the post above.

    Btw, I like your blog. Editra looks like an editor to check out.

  7. crackpod Says:
    November 13th, 2008 at 2:54 am

    “Btw, I like your blog. Editra looks like an editor to check out.”, thanks! The same goes for you. I hope to see some comments from you soon.

    CracKPod

  8. crackpod Says:
    November 13th, 2008 at 3:00 am

    Sorry, for the “double-comment” but could you inform me about some good Java tutorials? (E-Mail)

    You seem to now quite a lot about java.

  9. Nathaniel Sabanski Says:
    November 13th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    The official Java documentation is really good and generally up to date. It’s all here: http://java.sun.com/javase/reference/index.jsp

    The big tutorial: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/
    The API reference: http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/

    Good luck man!

  10. Ruivaldo Says:
    January 28th, 2009 at 9:09 am

    I love you man!

  11. xx Says:
    March 15th, 2009 at 10:31 am

    Thank-you thank-you thank-you.

  12. Demonhunter Says:
    May 21st, 2009 at 12:47 am

    …just THANK YOU!

  13. Ben G Says:
    June 2nd, 2009 at 11:46 pm

    Thanks. I too love this font and can’t stand coding with out it.

    I’m using Netbeans now – this is a godsend.

    Thanks again!

  14. noname Says:
    June 23rd, 2009 at 8:38 pm

    Thanks a lot, I already had this font but not in ttf format(which i prefer over others).

    Now I have much more space to write, also a very clean font.

  15. Saneesh Says:
    June 26th, 2009 at 1:25 am

    Thanks. I love Dina and was looking for TTF format to use in my editor

  16. Waldemar Says:
    October 22nd, 2009 at 2:46 am

    Dina is great. Thank you.

  17. lemon Says:
    November 6th, 2009 at 12:48 pm

    Thank you very much! It’s excellent!

  18. Tom Says:
    January 2nd, 2010 at 8:43 am

    Great post, thanks!!

  19. zvolkov Says:
    April 21st, 2010 at 5:22 am

    Thanks for sharing! BTW how is your version of Dina TTF different from this one:
    http://chrisrickard.blogspot.com/2010/03/dina-font-for-visual-studio-2010.html

  20. Nathaniel Sabanski Says:
    May 11th, 2010 at 12:37 am

    zvolkov, it looks like the method of conversion/creation used was significantly different, producing some subtleties. I cannot comment on his font any further because it does not work properly on my workstation.

  21. Phantasticus Says:
    June 15th, 2010 at 6:43 am

    Thanks, thanks, thanks, one billion thanks!!! I need this font to use it in MUSHclient under Wine (yes, I *need* it because all the other fonts look extremely ugly to me).

  22. Marc Says:
    June 18th, 2010 at 9:31 pm

    Thanks. I use this Dina Font in Toad (in the .fon format) for a long time. Now I have to work with Oracle SQL Developer, witch does not support the .fon format. I just copied the .ttf files to te font folder and could select te Dina font in Oracle SQL Developer.

  23. JP Says:
    November 17th, 2010 at 10:18 pm

    Thanks for this, but is there an adjustment you can make to the bold version of the font to more closely replicate the raster version?

    The bold TTF Dina font is considerably more “blocky” (wider?) than its bitmap counterpart when comparing VS2008/raster and VS2010/TTF side-by-side.

    PS: The gray you’re using for your comment box makes the typin caret virtually impossible to see!

  24. Gyuhang Says:
    January 19th, 2011 at 4:22 pm

    Thanks for your work.
    I love that font a lot.

  25. Ryan Says:
    February 10th, 2011 at 5:24 am

    Just was trying to use Dina in VS2010 and it doesn’t show up, now I know why. This TT version worked fine, thanks.

  26. pezi Says:
    February 25th, 2011 at 7:48 pm

    thanks SOOO much for this, I missed my poor Dina so much! props to you sir!!

  27. Tom Anderson Says:
    February 27th, 2011 at 10:23 am

    Thank you for dina TTF! I needed to switch from my long time friend Textpad so I could comment better and felt doing so here was more than appropriate.

  28. Zequez Says:
    March 7th, 2011 at 11:00 am

    Thanks!
    But it looks blurry in Windows 7 =X

  29. yakex Says:
    June 26th, 2011 at 2:59 pm

    thanks for your great work!

  30. reve Says:
    August 20th, 2011 at 10:14 am

    Dina font is my favorite too, I use it at everywhere,ssh terminal, vim … and this ttf works in vs2010 well, Its great thank you very very much

  31. tinywolf Says:
    November 28th, 2011 at 9:15 am

    Thank you! I love you man!

  32. lauterm Says:
    March 4th, 2012 at 4:32 am

    Thank you, sir!

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