The Perfect Excel Font 1

[sdz]

Is there such a thing as a perfect font for excel?

Compare the fonts shown below.
DejaVu Serif distinguishes between I and l (I and l) and allows good superscripts using standard characters (not using superscript character formatting).
(Unfortunately DejaVu Sans Serif loses the loses the distinction between I and l. )

1lI0O¹? Arial
1lI0O¹? Arial Unicode
1lI0O¹? DejaVu Serif
1lI0O¹? Tahoma
1lI0O¹? Trebuchet

So for engineering spreadsheets where you need clarity for writing equations DejaVu Serif looks like a good choice.

 

[IRstuff]

Sure, it's called Mathcad ;-)

Excel is a rather poor tool for writing equations, don't you think? I would even use Word's Equation Editor over Excel for something like that. Since it comes with Office, that should be the tool of choice, particularly since it's free.

The alternatives would be:

> the full-blown MathType package from Design Science, from whic MS got Equation Editor
> Mathlook for Excel from UTS:

http://www.uts.us.com/ItemDetails.asp?ItemID=1100-40-0000-00

Mathlook's something that can be directly integrated with Excel. There are probably a couple of other packages that are around.

One obvious issue is that you probably shouldn't be using a single typeface for everything, as well as avoiding mixing text and variables in the same cells.

But, since I use Mathcad practically every day, that's my tool of choice.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[Clyde38]

I can't say that any particular font is perfect for every spreadsheet that I create. In fact, at times I'll have different fonts in the same spreadsheet. Mathcad ($1195) is a bit rich for me, so I'll have to continue to use excel, the "poor" man's tool. I also use ExcelCalcs addin (can be free) to display my equations. I think it's tough to beat.

http://www.excelcalcs.com/

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http://www.linkedin.com/in/clydehancock

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[cvg]

I generally use the equation editor to document equations, not too difficult and full featured. Works with virtually any popular font in both Word or Excel. Sometimes I document using hand written sketches or equations, scanned and inserted. Cheap and low tech, but has that personal touch and nobody has complained yet. MathCad might be good, but in 25 years, I have only seen it used once by a bridge engineer. None of the civils I know use it, they virtually all use plain, vanilla Excel. Since none of our clients have mathcad, this is probably for the best. Most of the structurals I have worked with still do hand written calcs.