I really hate all my options with programming fonts. I have fairly particular tastes though: I prefer non-monowidth, since in my opinion there's no reason for the characters to be in columns. I prefer minimal line spacing, to fit more code on the screen. I will not use fonts that change size when you're selecting them. I'd prefer if I looks different than l and 1, and O looks different than 0. I'd like the (){}[]/\;:,. and other such non-alphanumerics to be larger than normal.
MS Sans (provided with Visual Studio 2005, or windows XP, not sure which) seems to accomodate most of these needs, but this is not the point: it doesn't accomodate all of them--but why should it? We as programmers are used to making things we don't have. Yet fonts, to the average user (or at least to me) are out of reach.
I'd like to start from a published font and customize it to my needs, and then use it in my IDE (Visual Studio, both 2005 and 2010). Practically speaking, is this possible?
EDIT: added commentary regarding the target IDE for this prospective font.
Creating your own (good) font is hard work. Here's a list and desciption of software you might want to use: http://typophile.com/node/20717 and generally there are quite a few resources on typophile.com including a forum.
Also, if you don't insist on using a proportional font, perhaps one of the fonts here: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/work/FontSurvey.aspx or here: http://keithdevens.com/wiki/ProgrammerFonts is a starting point.