non-reduntant font

[toryanse]

  I am looking for some non-reduntant, sans serif, proportionally spaced fonts.  That is:

1)  Courier is non-reduntant (each letter and number is different), but it has serifs and is fixed width

2)  Arial is sans serif and proportionally spaced, but redundant.  For example using Arial for the word  "Illustrator"  upper case "i" and lower case "L" look the same.

A font like Arial would be fine if it had an upper case "i" that looked like "I".  It would be nice to have a font table listing the various attributes of the common fonts

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

You don't mention what you need the font for, so I'll just mention the first one that pops into my head:  ITC Officina Sans (from Adobe).

[toryanse]

This "ITC"  font might do the trick.  I need it for technical writing.  It is a nice and attractive font.  To my eye, I find that the upper case J looks like a backwards "C".  The upper case "i" is great.  The lower case "L" has a bit of a hook on it which is a bit non-standard.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Of course there's also Thomas Phinney's Hypatia Sans Pro;

[toryanse]

Again, this hypatia font is a really attractive font.  At the risk of sounding hypercritical:

1)  The upper case "j" dips below the line

2)  The upper case "i" and lower case "L" still look the same

3)  The upper case "w" is non-standard.

So, it's a non-starter.

  I'm looking for a clean (sans serif) font in which all letters are unique and quickly recognizable for technical writing.  At times, the font size may need to be small and sometimes non-native English speakers will be involved.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Glad you found something useful in my suggestions.

Don't worry about sounding hypercritical.  I also find Hypatia very nice, and it works very nicely in English, Spanish and Russian.  I can't use it to set German text, however, as I personally don't care for its German Es-Zet ß glyph.  (I don't like that glyph in Verdana either, so I've momentarily switched to Arial for this post.)

Though I've said this at least twice before in these forums, discussing the characteristics of various sans serif faces strikes me as akin to having to discuss the merits of individual types of enemas.