[Mageia-dev] new fonts?

Mon Sep 24 19:21:58 CEST 2012

On Mon, 2012-09-24 at 15:57 +0200, EatDirt wrote:
+
+> I think we should pay attention to the default fonts we will choose for 
+> mga3, indeed. That's the very first reflex of any user, either you like, 
+> or you don't, that would even deserve a contest may be.
+
+Reaction to typefaces depends on several factors -
+. familiarity (e.g. Europeans are generally more familiar with reading
+long texts in sans serif faces than Americans);
+. eyesight, contrast, lighting and viewing distance (this is especially
+true of whether antialiasing is considered a huge, 10,000 times
+improvement in readability or is considered an ugly distraction;
+. rendering quality - irregularities tend to be distracting and cause
+fatigue but people often say they like them at first;
+. culture (e.g. Cyrillic / Fraktur / Antiqua);
+. default font sizes and inter-linear spacing - unfortunately many
+applications don't give control over inter-linear spacing, showing that
+the programmers do not have a background in typography :-)
+
+There's a whole bunch of research that's been done around each of these
+factors (and more).
+
+You won't find a single set of fonts that works for everyone, and a
+popular vote probably isn't the best way forward to choose one.
+
+On the other foot, a community effort around font packaging and
+improving themes would likely have a huge benefit.
+
+Liam
+
+-- 
+Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
+Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
+Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml
+The barefoot typographer - http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/
+
+