Hi Mathieu- There has been a whole lot of research on this. If you are looking at reading quality, more important factors are kerning, leading, and line length. Also, the age and background of the readers has a significant effect. (For example, in a study published in the early 1990s, researchers found that European readers generally preferred sans serif and North American (probably just USA) readers preferred serif, all other things being equal.)
That said, all the companies (admittedly, large ones) have specified the type faces to be used. Generally it has been Times or Times New Roman for print, with Arial or Helvetica for headings. I can't recall what my prior employer used online, but my current one specifies Helvetica and Arial for online help, with Courier (a fixed-width font) for the code examples. For PDF (we don't really do paper any more) the default font is Times at 12 pt. Given our readers average 40+ years old, have high-resolution displays, generally are working on a Unix-based computer, and are accustomed to lots of reading, the choice is appropriate. I sure wouldn't use it for something meant for a younger audience, though. My _personal_ preference leans to the new MS fonts (Cambria, I think it was) that were released with Vista, based on having edited two papers that used them and from an IEEE Spectrum article about the research involved in their creation. I have not personally used the fonts (not available on my older system), but the two documents did seem especially clear on screen without being distractingly different. Regards- Sam. -----Original Message----- From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of mathieu jacquet Sent: Monday, July 20, 2009 1:57 AM To: framers at lists.frameusers.com Subject: Standard font for technical documentation Dear all, is there any "standard font" for writing Getting Started guides, User Manuals and other technical documents? Which one do you personnally use? Do you find that some fonts offer a better "reading quality" than others? Thank you very much in anticipation. Yours sincerely, Mathieu. _________________________________________________________________ T?l?phonez gratuitement ? tous vos proches avec Windows Live Messenger? !? T?l?chargez-le maintenant ! http://www.windowslive.fr/messenger/1.asp _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as samantha_lizak at mentor.com. Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/samantha_lizak%40mentor.com Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
