But a problem with this approach is you're looking at best cases, not
worst cases. Isn't Helvetica normally a mac thing, and optimised for the
font rendering used on macs? Windows falls back to Arial, which is
similar but doesn't have a lot of the optimisations and polish often
people like to cite as arguments for using helvetica in the first place,
but it's still reasonable. Linux falls back to whatever - nimbus or open
sans if you're lucky, but if you have wine installed, and a lot of
people do, windows fonts such as arial are often installed then, as well
- and these tend to be far poorer than the windows versions, in some
cases not supporting smoothing at all (and for wine's purposes, that's
fine, but for general use, not so much.).
Narrow fonts such as helvetica also don't necessarily scale down well,
either - they may be better than serifs, but get small enough (<13px)
and that narrowness can take a significant toll in readability unless
the system is specifically optimised to handle that. Which they
generally are, if the default font is a narrow font. But what if it
isn't? It isn't on most linuxes...
Not all font rendering is created equal. Font rendering on a mac is very
different from font rendering on Windows Vista, which is also very
different from XP or 7, which are different from Ubuntu, which is very
different from default X (base graphics for any *nix), which is also
quite different from the various infinality (a font rendering and
optimisation package) configurations people could be using...
And systems choose their fonts according to how they render. If they can
afford it, they MAKE those fonts according to how they render. But those
ain't free. Why would we be supporting those who specifically tailor
their own fonts to their own platforms by forcing those fonts, or
similar, onto platforms where they render poorly (because they often do
have them installed/mapped, even if they're really ugly
versions/fallbacks), and yet where free fonts ARE well-supported?
If serving up a specific free font in line with our FOSS standards is
out of the question, shouldn't we just support all our users' best cases
by leaving them to their defaults? The worst cases can be quite bad.
On 17/02/14 19:49, May Tee-Galloway wrote:
We've been testing out Open Sans on the apps team, it's an open source
font. The goals with any font choice is high quality (legible,
scannable, well-kerned, etc), has wide character set, and since every
font has its own personality, we want the font choice to reflect us
and our content, and among that is credible, neutral, and high quality.
Not all fonts are created equal. Helvetica is very widely used not
only because it's such a polished font but it was designed
specifically to be the font that is neutral and to have no implied
meanings like many fonts do. Sounds perfect, except for the not free
part.
We're actively looking and trying out helvetica neue alternative
that's open source but it's been challenging. They either don't come
with enough characters, not well-kerned, or has too much personality
that is not us.
I understand the preference for an open source font but we are giving
up certain areas that are probably just as important as being open
source like reading experience.
As for Georgia or Helvetica, serif (Georgia) fonts are recommended
with larger texts because they don't reduce well on screen. Sans serif
(Helvetica) fonts are recommended with smaller texts because they
retain their general character shapes better than serif fonts. [1] One
might argue that our web body text is not that small, hence we can use
serif. There are three reasons why I wouldn't recommend that. 1.
Content looks large and fine on the web but when it's displayed on
phones and tablets, it's not as big anymore to use serif. 2. Why don't
we use serif on web and sans serif on other platforms? Because that
causes inconsistency. Readers should experience the same experience
regardless of platform. WP content should be the one that takes center
stage, not "why is my content appearing different on my tablet or
phone?" We have fallback font options only when we must choose an
alternative. 3. Helvetica has a neutral font personality. Serif, on
the other hand, has many implications like traditional, Roman, formal,
etc. [2,3]
We know the importance for using an open source font and we have been
looking for an alternative. We also know that we care deeply for our
reader's experience. Helvetica was chosen to use because it helped
reflect our content type, it's high quality, has good amount of
character set (and if it doesn't, it's fairly easy to find a
similar-ish font to match). But I can't lie it's a beautiful font, I
can assure you we didn't judge Helvetica by its cover though. ;P Hope
this helps!
_______________________________________________
Design mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
