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posted by janrinok on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the stuff-that-matters dept.

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.)


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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Snotnose on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:44AM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:44AM (#413255)

    It's actually hilarious. People who moderate have no clue as to the backstory so they moderate on how I stated it. I'll bet $100 those who moderated me funny never tried to install LaTex in the late 80s/early 90s. My meaningless word 1 verb meaningless word 2 are simply examples of A) how the questions made no sense; and B) My lack of memory 30 years later of the specifics while remembering the pain.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Funny=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Funny' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 2, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday October 12 2016, @05:46AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday October 12 2016, @05:46AM (#413287) Journal

    People who moderate have no clue as to the backstory so they moderate on how I stated it. I'll bet $100 those who moderated me funny never tried to install LaTex in the late 80s/early 90s

    Pay up, you sorry old bastard! $100 to aristarchus@paymeallyourmoney.com. Unfortunately, this address requires that you have a 80's vintage LaTeX install!