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Our recent story, More Than 800 Languages in a Single Typeface: Noto got me to thinking about the fonts that I currently use. And where, and why. And to wondering what fonts my fellow Soylentils use. I've explored different options over the years and this seems to be as good a time as any to revisit my choices. Why not learn from the collected experience of the community?
For my PC, I've got a 1920x1200 monitor plugged into a laptop. Some font choices I've made are simply from inertia having just defaulted to whatever was available "way back when" and a lack of desire to change. Like in a CMD.EXE window, my default choice is an "8x12 Raster Font" (on a 192x66 character window). When writing code in Emacs, I use "Lucida Console". There are two other applications where I seem to spend the most of my time on my home system. First, my browser (Pale Moon 26.5.0 x86) where I have selected "Serif", "Times New Roman", "Arial Unicode MS", and "Courier New". My other highly-used program is HexChat where I've loaded "Unifont Upper CSUR" (Available at unifoundry.com). I tested the implementation of Unicode support on SoylentNews and needed access to a font with more complete code coverage. It is especially convenient as it provides relatively complete coverage in a single font file.
I have an older Android phone and use the default fonts in Chrome when browsing. The rest of the phone UI, is whatever default it came with, too. I do tend to select the smallest font size available so I can maximize the amount of information displayed on the screen at one time.
<rant>One pet peeve of mine is how often a font makes it hard to distinguish between "tom" and "torn" where the letter spacing between "r" and "n" is so small that it is nearly indistinguishable from "m".</rant>
So, my case is not terribly exciting — I'm more of a pragmatist who looks for whatever provides the largest amount of legible text on my display. I make the best choice I can from the available options at the time — and if what I find is "good enough", then I tend to run with that until I learn of something better becoming available.
So, given the arrival of the Noto fonts, I've gotten the thought it may be time for me to reappraise my font choices. What fonts do you use? What do you most like about them? Dislike? (If you got the font from the web, please provide a URL so others may download and try them, too.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdavidb on Wednesday October 12 2016, @12:10AM
I like the one mintty uses.
My wife, on the other hand, downloads fonts from all over the web. I'm always noticing weird files in her download folder and asking "What's this?" and discovering it's a font.
When we got married my walls were white and bare, and it wasn't long until she had them all painted colors with pictures.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:52AM
SYSTEM for the win.
Women are great at decorating, so having a canvas for them is always good. Except when you let the new one paint over the old one.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:15AM
Gay men are better at decorating than any woman, and gay men don't steal your sperm and impregnate themselves and susan you for child support.
(Score: 3, Funny) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:17PM
You know you're a nerd when...you reinstall your Linux partition and then fire up the terminal and think, "Crap, I should've written down what the font settings were before I wiped the old one."
Then those first few days where the different highlighting and font drives you nuts before you stop noticing. #firstworldproblems
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"