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.)
Related Stories
A typeface five years in the making, Google Noto spans more than 100 writing systems, 800 languages, and hundreds of thousands of characters. A collaborative effort between Google and Monotype, the Noto typeface is a truly universal method of communication for billions of people around the world accessing digital content.
Google set Monotype a straightforward brief: "no more tofu" – tofu being the nickname for the blank boxes that are shown when a computer or site lacks font support for a particular character. To meet Google's requirement, Monotype needed to develop one typographic family that could cover the more than 800 languages included in the Unicode Consortium standard.
This mammoth effort required harmonious design and development of an unprecedented number of scripts, including several rare writing systems that had never been digitized before. "It was this really phenomenal, daunting project," says Google internationalization expert Bob Jung. "Looking back at it, I'm even surprised myself how ambitious we were."
"Our goal for Noto has been to create fonts for our devices, but we're also very interested in keeping information alive," he adds. "When it comes to some of the lesser-used languages, or even the purely academic or dead languages, we think it's really important to preserve them."
takyon: Ars Technica article and download page at Google.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:37PM
And Bodoni Poster Bold.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 5, Funny) by Snotnose on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:42PM
I change the size but not the font itself. I got tired of dicking with fonts installing LaTex in the late 80s/early 90s, I want nothing to do with them anymore.
For those of you too young, early LaTex installs were a nightmare. You got asked a bunch of questions like "Do you want the flapdoodle in the argus?", and "did you enable fribizz?". You'd take a guess at all these, let it build, see what failed, and start over with a little more information. It typically took me 3 tries to finally get it built and installed. Keep in mind at the time I'd been using Unix for 10+ years, 4 of them as a sysadmin.
LaTex was great once you got it installed, but jeez, installing it was a royal pain.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Snotnose on Wednesday October 12 2016, @12:58AM
Mods, wasn't aiming for funny here. Try again.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:13AM
flapdoodle in the argus.
Be thankful for the funny mods. Someone is sure to be triggered somewhere, thinking about a lawsuit.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:28AM
Mods, wasn't aiming for funny here. Try again.
"To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit, call it the target."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:55AM
Mods, wasn't aiming for funny here. Try again.
"To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit, call it the target."
The technical name of this, in Logic, not in LaTeX, is "The Texas Marksman Fallacy". Usually something to do with epidemiology and the broad sides of barns. The rest is left to the reader as an exercise.
(And, snotnose, very funny!!!)
(Score: 5, Funny) by Snotnose on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:28AM
This is hilarious. My post saying my original post wasn't aiming for funny is now funnier than my original post. Which is still moderated as funny.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Funny) by JNCF on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:27AM
Okay Snotnose, it was Funny the first three times. Four, and it's karma whoring!
(Score: 5, Funny) by Snotnose on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:44AM
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.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday October 12 2016, @05:46AM
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!
(Score: 2) by snufu on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:39AM
(I'm not trying to be (I'm not trying to be (I'm not trying to be funny)))
(Score: 5, Funny) by Snotnose on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:49AM
Now my original post, which wasn't aiming for funny, is now +5 funny, as is my post saying my original post wasn't meant to be funny, is now +5 funny, as is my post saying my post about my original post wasn't meant to be funny is now +5 funny.
I feel like Donald Trump without the money :(
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday October 12 2016, @06:08AM
Well, given that Donald Trump clearly is a snotnose, you should not be surprised at that. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:43PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday October 12 2016, @06:04AM
You are aware that to moderate you differently, you would first have to be downmodded? And since you cannot moderate the same post twice, the downmodder would have to speculate that another moderator would moderate you up again, otherwise your score would be permanently reduced (and if that upmoderation happens to be a Funny again, the downvote would effectively be a wasted modpoint).
Also note that whoever moderated you funny cannot revise that decision anyway. Moderations are final (except for the possibility of the site owners modifying it, if necessary by directly changing the database — but I strongly doubt getting another moderation reason for your post is sufficiently important for that).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:02AM
I read whatever in whatever default font. It's pretty much all the same to me, except wingdings look stupid, ancient fonts look stupid and confusing. I dislike anything which isn't easily read, I want it simple. But, the details of the fonts? I read. I don't look at the letters, I look at the words and/or symbols.
Remember, I started out on an Underhill typewriter, where the font was the font. After Selectric had been around awhile, you could change those little balls to get different fonts. Using a typewriter in the Navy required that you knew how to change those balls. Sometimes you used all caps, and a few symbols, other times it was upper/lower case with normal typewritten symbols, blah blah blah. So, when I got my first computers, I played with the fonts a little bit.
In the end, I got tired of messing around with minor details that meant almost nothing to me, and just went with default. I still don't know what most fonts are, I only remember a few of them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:25AM
Haha, yes, I remember when the choice was Pica or Elite, and if you were truly extravagant, an IBM that did proportional type (and jammed a lot).
When I'd progressed to a typewriter that took printwheels, I mostly used OCR-B. Prints nice and legible even with an old ribbon.
For stuff printed off the computer, I like the Lucida family. Over 23,000 fonts in my collection, and still can't beat it.
For the screen, Tahoma (except for being annoyed by the common san serif issue of cl and d, and rn and m, being too similar) or Times New Roman.
Or whatever the hell the website presents me with.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:49AM
Jesus Christ, I'd completely forgotten that bit of old tech history. I could check out a typewriter from the college library, and also check out a ball. If my essay had something to say I'd get the one with the little font, otherwise I'd bloviate with the larger font.
Damn I'm getting old :( Beats the alternative, but still.....
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Reziac on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:44AM
Funny story... I was at some tech conference hosted by IBM, and we'd just heard a spiel about whatever was their latest-and-greatest tech. The presenter was doing the "get responses from the crowd and hand out T-shirts" schtick.... and asked the assembled crowd: "What is IBM known for?" with the obvious answer of course being their new tech we'd just heard about.
Dead silence. Apparently the latest-and-greatest had made no great impression.
And I couldn't resist. Into the silence I said, "Typewriters!"
Won me a nifty T-shirt. :D
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by snufu on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:43AM
That is some pretty kinky kerning. Which Knuth book did you read?
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:17AM
That is some pretty kinky kerning. Which Knuth book did you read?
I actually bought the 3 that were available back then at something like $60/book. In 80's dollars. Suckers were expensive but worth it. Haven't bought any of his newer ones, the $$$/value isn't there.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:43PM
I'm all out of faith
This is how I feel
I'm cold and I am shamed
Lying naked on the floor
Illusion never changed
Into something real
I'm wide awake and I can see
The perfect guy is tom
You're a little late, I'm already tom
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:43PM
On my PC, I've set the system font, my web browser's default serif font, and my IRC client's font to Jester [dafont.com], a digitization of Filmotype August. Its glyph shapes are more distinctive than an all-symmetry-all-the-time sans, and screenshots [imgur.com] make people ask "what the font?".
(Score: 1) by zzw30 on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:59PM
I'm glad you found a font that works for you, but that just seems like a hipster Comic Sans.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:27AM
No, No, I'm pretty sure Jester pre-dates comic, as its dates from the arrival of the golgafrinchans on the B Arc, which is pretty much where the discussion of fonts originated.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:31AM
Correct. Comic Sans was created in 1994, while the Filmotype machine dates back to the 1950s or thereabouts. A bold extended variant (Panache Sixpack, based on Filmotype Beaver) is used in the logos of Harris Teeter and ABCmouse.com.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday October 12 2016, @09:43AM
They say disasters come in pair, but there is nothing like Comic sans. Thank God.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by pendorbound on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:15PM
Marker Felt is a close second, IMHO.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:15PM
I was going to say the bastard lovechild of Comic Sans and Times Roman (or any serif font really I guess).
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday October 12 2016, @07:37AM
I thought Jester looked like it’d be a fun font to use for GUI stuff, but it’s lacking symbols like @ # _ as well as common Unicode characters like curly–quotes. Damn.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday October 13 2016, @02:50AM
I thought Jester looked like it’d be a fun font to use for GUI stuff
I've been collecting a list of places where I've seen Apache, August, Beaver, and their progeny used [pineight.com].
but it’s lacking symbols like @# _ as well as common Unicode characters like curly–quotes. Damn.
Somehow I don't notice because Pango substitutes most of the missing characters. But last time I checked, Font Diner was making new digitizations of the Filmotype library. When it gets down to Apache, August, and Beaver, those will probably have the extra characters. And I've been working on my own typeface inspired by August [imgur.com].
(Score: 2) by caffeine on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:55PM
>One pet peeve of mine is how often a font makes it hard to distinguish between "tom" and "torn"
If only have parents had not named you Torn this would not be such an issue for you. You should have a chat to them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:41AM
Perhaps you've heard of Elmore Rual "Rip" Torn Jr.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snotnose on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:31AM
To quote Peter David: "Never name your character Clint Flicker".
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 12 2016, @05:56PM
"Torn, Tom just couldn't decide." I agree with the submitter.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by pen-helm on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:59PM
I'm happy with any anti-aliased font.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JNCF on Wednesday October 12 2016, @12:02AM
I really like the Proggy fonts [greer.fm]. Monospaced, readable, minimal. They're great for tiny terminals (especially ProggyTiny). Plus, using a pixelated font makes me feel cool even though it probably shouldn't and I know that.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:53AM
Thanks. I've been looking for a monospaced font that's legible at smaller sizes.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 12 2016, @06:41AM
Terminus is a monospace font that looks good without hinting and anti-aliasing.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 12 2016, @04:04PM
This one?
http://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/#what [ax86.net]
Not quite what I need for my particular monospaced use, but still a nice font. Added to my collection. Thanks!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @12:02AM
One that doesn't look like shit and that doesn't piss me off.
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:53AM
So papyrus?
(Score: 1) by charon on Thursday October 13 2016, @12:00AM
I'm surprised I was halfway down the page before a Papyrus joke showed up.
(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?"
(Score: 1) by garrulus on Wednesday October 12 2016, @12:23AM
https://github.com/eosrei/EmojiOne-Color-Font [github.com]
http://eosrei.github.io/emojione-color-font/full-demo.html [github.io]
This font enables fullcolour ttf embedded svg emoticons, unfortunately it depends on using the not so pretty bitstream vera font as primary (for overlay/stacking order reasons)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @10:54AM
I’m fine with my black fonts for emoj or otherwise.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday October 12 2016, @12:48AM
Most of my time is spent in a code editor with Code Pro. Beyond that, I am a fan of Lucida Sans Unicode for the basics (it is my email font). Palatino Linotype for printed text where serifs are bette for readability. I find myself printing larger text in Optima for labels, and on the computer the free font Fontin for anything slightly decorative (it replaces Gaiandra GD which looks stunning but is not free and I'm not sure where I picked it up).
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:27AM
Yup. Lucinda and Liberation both work really well for everyday proportional fonts.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday October 12 2016, @12:50AM
JK, Open Sans, fall back to Tahoma.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:02AM
My fave is boring old Arial with Microsoft ClearType rendering.
Apple has the very similar Helvetica with a different rendering algorithm that supposedly preserved the "printed type" look at smaller font sizes on the screen, but it wasn't as clear to read.
Arial just looks good printed or on the screen.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:08AM
Those with good bitmaps for small and normal sizes. Sick of fuzzy and variable color fonts because it took ages for some to realize the proper mixing formula in sRGB. In some cases, even when they finally realized/accepted the fact (yes, some negate(d) that mixing in non linear spaces are not same formulas than linear one), still not implemented.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Marand on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:19AM
I really like using Input [fontbureau.com] for monospace text. It's decent even default, but what stands out is it's configurable [fontbureau.com] for things like whether you want 0 with a line through or not, letter spacing, type of g, type of a, etc.
For variable-width, I don't care as much. Lots of good ones out there, and most are pretty readable. I have been getting annoyed at Roboto lately, not because of the font itself, but because web "designers" have started explicitly naming it in their CSS and I have it installed on my desktop, so everything on the page ends up looking bold like this when it gets used. I ended up having to make a userstyle to replace Roboto with Ubuntu on offending sites, like github, because it's horrible to read otherwise.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:55AM
☺︎◆︎⬧︎⧫︎ ⬧︎♋︎⍓︎ ■︎□︎ ⧫︎□︎ 💣︎□︎■︎♓︎♍︎♋︎🕯︎⬧︎ ♏︎⌧︎📫︎♌︎□︎⍓︎♐︎❒︎♓︎♏︎■︎♎︎⬧︎ ⬥︎♓︎♐︎♏︎ ♓︎■︎ 📄︎📁︎📂︎⌛︎📬︎
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:04AM
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:09AM
https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/consolamono [fontlibrary.org]
I use this for some monospaced stuff. Looks good IMO.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:30AM
Shiny but I have to stick with Unifont cause nothing else is as complete and I hate seeing boxes.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:53AM
Yeah, but if I'm in my text editor, ain't no way I'm going to throw Unicode glyphs around. I don't even want Extended ASCII.
For the Web, maybe Noto is the right move. Though number6 mentioned [soylentnews.org] in the previous story that they couldn't get some East Asian glyphs to work, so maybe it is better to treat it as beta. We can live without Hieroglyphs, Etruscan, Sanskrit, or whatever for a few more years.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:20AM
[...] where the letter spacing [...]
Letter spacing is a proportion constant for all letters, when is adjusted for certain letter combinations that is called kerning (or mortising):
Don't miss https://xkcd.com/1015/ [xkcd.com] Sorry! ;)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:31AM
I work with a mainframe everyday, all day. The only two monospace fonts in the telnet client my work provides are Lucida Console and Consolas. I much prefer Consolas of the two. In fact, one of the first things I do every morning at work is switch the telnet client over to the Consolas font, because for some reason it never remembers what font you last used and you can't change the default from Arial. So I use Consolas as my monospace font of choice everywhere now, pretty much out of habit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:38AM
A well-designed Microsoft-designed alternative to Helvetica and Arial (proportional, sans serif).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdana [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by joekiser on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:03AM
I use terminus on a fullscreen 1920x1200 xterm.
Debt is the currency of slaves.
(Score: 1) by drgibbon on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:04AM
I use Mozilla's Fira Mono [carrois.com] in Emacs, and Droid Sans Mono [google.com] in the terminal. There are also interesting possibilities with the use of ligatures especially for character combinations when programming, e.g., Fira Code [github.com].
Certified Soylent Fresh!
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Wednesday October 12 2016, @03:44AM
I install two fonts on every system I run.
In the first case, I did an extensive search for a nice clean fixed width font that looked good at 9pt or so. I found Dina: https://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina/ [donationcoder.com] It's available in some linux repos, else the TTF install is usually easy enough to install linux these days. I end up using this as a my default system font and sometimes as my default terminal font.
The second font I grab is GlassTTY: http://asdasd.rpg.fi/~svo/glasstty/ [asdasd.rpg.fi]. This is a little goofy in how it plays with anti-aliasing and what not, and some sizes look perfect, others look like crap. I use this a lot as my terminal font, but do switch back and forth between this and Dina. It turns out to be super easy on the eyes. It also has a cool retro look, which as some of you now, I'm a big retro-computing guy, so it works for me. My default terminal colors are always orange on black.
When composing email or writing a document, I usually don't GAF and just use whatever the default in the program is, but for doing real work (in a terminal, IDE, etc), it's fixed width or nothing.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday October 12 2016, @04:23AM
The Garamond revs (Sabon for sans body),
Trajan (for all caps titles and headers),
Baskerville (for the serifs stuff),
Bigelow & Holmes stuff (for screens. Lucida Grande makes me want to go Mac. I do end up with Dejavu Sans as a default on systems I can't get Lucida for though...).
...
The default latex computer modern when there's math \ code involved. It also makes a good font overall for just about everything but it looks too professional when you're setting casual content.
Baskerville body + Trajan headings makes everything serif look good. A bit more biz/common then computer modern.
For casually good looking mails or when under no-serifs restrictions (MLA style papers and most unis require sans), I'd usually go with a Sabon\CM body and Trajan headings.
eMails are just "sendmail youremail@mail.com" text messages from me so there's no fonts involved on my end.
Not a very inspired list but that's mostly what I've used \ been using for over a decade with little variance.
p.s. Mind you I've seen some very nice fonts over the years but I can't just go out an buy them all so I end up using the ones I bought already and liked...
compiling...
(Score: 2) by blackhawk on Wednesday October 12 2016, @06:33AM
I flipped to using Hack a while back for all my coding font needs. It's designed for code, is very readable, and has slashes through the zeroes; like God intended. It's spaced nicely, and works great with the typical code mess of mixed alphanumerics and parentheses.
For most other purposes I don't care too much about changing the default fonts...but for code, Hack is my jam.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 12 2016, @06:51AM
The Baskerville font has an interesting effect on readers. Seem that font makes the text seem more important, leads readers to take the content more seriously.
I don't have dyslexia so I can't say how useful OpenDyslexic is out of personal experience, but I've used it, It's a little different look but quite readable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @07:11AM
The Baskerville font has an interesting effect on readers.
Citation: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-people-hearken-o-earth/ [nytimes.com]
p.s. Comic Sans. To troll people.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Wednesday October 12 2016, @07:21AM
The choice of font also depends to some degree in which language you are working. Even when programming, where Takyon stated his preference for ASCII, other languages require the use of characters that are not available in that font. Working in more than 1 language at a time, and you might have to find a font that performs equally well in each language, or at least to an acceptable level. Sure, the the basic characters look the same but umlauts, carets and other diacritics (ùéèàûôêëïç) require a font that displays them clearly.
Python 3 also supports using Unicode characters in identifiers, which is essential if they are to have meaningful names in the language of the country in which the program is written and maintained:
Of course, key words don't change but they are easily remembered by any programmer worth his salt.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday October 12 2016, @07:53AM
Inconsolata is my favorite, it's basically a system/terminal font that is truetype.
Can't recall if it was here or on the green site I first saw it mentioned.
Anything that causes issues with 1/l/I/| or rn/m or 0/O/Ö/Ø is not worth considering im(ns)ho
(In case the Ø/0 confuses you with inconsolata, on Ø the strikethrough goes outside the circle, doesn't for 0 (also different angles))
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @11:06AM
Arimo, Cousine, Tinos (croscore). Used Liberation previously, which are the same thing now, or something. I’ve also installed crosextra, but I don’t think I used them for anything yet.
Any suggestions on readable Japanese fonts for Linux? I’ve got UmePlus currently, and that’s about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @11:35AM
One Font to rule them all - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0847817/ [imdb.com]
(Score: 2) by weeds on Wednesday October 12 2016, @12:52PM
I used to work for a printing company with a creative department. Years ago, someone came across this gem from College Humor and I still watch it once in a while. It's called "Font Conference." In the description it says, "This video wasn't long enough, so we made it double-spaced."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3k5oY9AHHM [youtube.com]
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @12:59PM
I'm stuck using Windows for .NET development. Install ProFontWindows, disable font smoothing, disable TrueType, and disable all that other sub-pixel hinting nonsense, and Windows renders crisp text in Visual Studio. The downside is everything else looks like shit. Oh well, gotta have your priorities.
(Score: 2, Funny) by gauauu on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:40PM
1 Word: COMIC SANS.
Best Font Ever.
Not even sure why we still have other fonts.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Tara Li on Wednesday October 12 2016, @04:09PM
I found an IBM 3270 font at https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font [github.com] , and fell in love for one minor feature. It's a feature that honestly, I don't think anyone *but* myself considers worth while, but it's one that ticks me off *REPEATEDLY* over and over: seriffs on monospaced lowercase i. Pretty much *EVERY* single monospace font I looked at either did a little serif on the top, the bottom, or both, of the bar. And it repeatedly over and over looked so VERY VERY wrong.
So, well, honestly - I'm happy, I don't much care if anyone else likes the font, or if they do, that they like it for the same reason. I have my lowercase i shaped the way I want it, and all is right with the world. There won't be any EVAs attacking me.
(Score: 1) by warcques on Wednesday October 12 2016, @04:38PM
For print, I like reading Garamond since it was used for some of my favourite books.
Lately I've typed my non-Latex papers in Junicode <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junicode>:
>Junicode contains many special characters and ligatures for medievalists, along with numerous other Unicode glyphs. The font has OpenType features for advanced typesetting and includes true small caps.
It also includes really nice IPA symbols.
I cringe when I see Times New Roman in anything printed other than student papers that require it.
When I quit windoze98 for some linux in 2005, I liked Lucida Console for its aesthetics as a monospace.
There was a time when I worked at finding a perfect font for programming C and C++; but these days I use whichever terminal default and deal with it. I don't like to spend time being special and carrying around a vehement preference with me anymore that only makes it a problem when I'm away from my own machine.
Endless studies have indeed shown that people simply read best whatever typeface they've spent the most time with, though.
.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 12 2016, @05:29PM
I agree completely. King's On Writing had one of those awful typefaces. Also, fonts that are hard to OCR. But what's worse is the internet -- idiots with light gray text on a white background, for instance.
My favorite fonts are all serif book fonts, though, probably because I'd read probably tens of thousands of books before the internet ever existed. I use Gentium Book Basic in my books and web sites, although on a phone or tablet you won't get that font. Even worse, when I look at my sites on my phone it's a sans serif font! Oddly, a few sites have managed to get serifs on a phone and I have yet to figure out how they're doing it.
What's worse than unreadable typefaces is unreadable font sizes, and the internet sucks at it, or maybe it's just Samsung. Both my Samsung tablets have TINY typefaces, far smaller than my phone (Kyocera), and it's hard for me to read even though my vision is better than 20/20 at all distances.
The problem stems from no HTML tag for font size in point sizes. If there was a <Font face="Gentium book basic, Times new roman, times" size="12pt"> the problem would end, but it's even worse than that: HTML 5 doesn't have a tag; you're expected to use CSS, and I hate CSS.
Why, you may ask? Because I fucking HATE it when I'm trying to read a newspaper and the damned facebook and twitter icons cover what I'm trying to read, and half the time you're reading an article and the page starts jumping around. On my sites I only use a <style> statement to provide a mouseover.
One more pet peeve about the (stupid) internet: Links are underlined. What's wrong with this? For hundreds of years, italics marked foreign words or a book or article title. Links should have been designed to be italic, not underlines, since historically underlining has meant emphasis, not an article title.
</rant>
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday October 12 2016, @09:20PM
The problem stems from no HTML tag for font size in point sizes. If there was a <Font face="Gentium book basic, Times new roman, times" size="12pt"> the problem would end, but it's even worse than that: HTML 5 doesn't have a tag; you're expected to use CSS, and I hate CSS.
This isn't the best way to do style text, but it is a way that you might like more than attaching stylesheets. You can write your CSS styling right in the middle of your markup. You still need to know how CSS styling works syntacticly, but you don't have to deal with classes or selectors. Again, I wouldn't recommend this (the vast majority of the time -- there are actually performance arguments for sometimes using inline styling above the fold if the very slight improvement in time to first render is worth the development time and maintenance hassle), I just think it matches what you're looking for fairly well. Here's an example:
<span style="font-family:'Gentium Book Basic', 'Times New Roman', Times; font-size:12pt;">
Note that font names with spaces require quotes. As long as you don't use @font-face [w3schools.com] to attach new fonts that's the only time that quotes should be required. Most of the time, quotes are optional. The only time that you cannot use quotes is when referencing the name of a generic font family [w3.org] instead of a specific font: serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy, or monospace.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 12 2016, @06:08PM
If I'm sending a story to an editor, it's Courier, because they won't read any other font. For a book I use Gentium Book Basic for text and Aral Black for headings. For graphics I use all sorts of different fonts depending on what the graphic is; if I'm putting a speech balloon in a photograph I'll use comic sans or similar. If it's a picture of a boulder that looks like a butt and I'm making fun of Trump I have one that looks like runny paint, like "drippy marker" or "theme for murder". If it's over a kalidescopic photo or image I'll use an outline font like you see in the better movie captioning.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @11:36PM
...is another pair that's good for checking one's fonts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @11:55PM
Really it's no different from Tom/Torn.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:52PM
Well, there are a few. Obviously there are things that need a monospaced font, such as some text editors.
But I prefer a good proportional font for most things, including Java coding. (Pause for cries of "Shame! Shame!".)
Even stranger, I prefer a good sans-serif to serif fonts. (Pause for cries of "Heresy!!!")
Now, sans-serif fonts vary a lot, and some are pretty unreadable. I'm not talking about the more geometrical and futuristic ones, some of which seem designed to make letters indistinguishable.
But a good humanist sans-serif, especially one with variable stroke width (like most serif fonts) is something I find easiest on the eye.
My favourites are Optima [wikipedia.org] and those which mimic it such as Optimum [fontpalace.com] and MgOpen Cosmetica [opensuse.org]. I find these easy to read, clear, and unfussy, but with an understated elegance.
(I've also used a similar but proprietary font called Barclays that I like even more, but that's not freely available.)
I also find fonts like Century Gothic and MS Twentieth Century good in IDEs.
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by number6 on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:29PM
FYI, here is a list of every single font I have added to my Windows XP system from the beginning (2011)** until now,
I have installed and removed many others over the years but these are the ones that stay,
some of the fonts in this list are included in a _full_ WinXP install,
however my XP setup CD was highly customized and minimized with many stripped out features,
and I put stuff back into the system as I go along .......
HTML 3-column table converted to TXT by JafSoft Detagger 2.4 <http://www.jafsoft.com/detagger/>:
**
The _real_ beginning of my WinXP system was 2009, but one day in 2011 .......................
I created a batch file which was designed to work with the right click menu recursively removing a selected directory and all its contents (using the command `RD /S /Q ...`).
One day I committed to an operation leaving the console window running and proceeded to pay attention to something else on my desktop.
After about 20 seconds, I noticed the command prompt window was continuing to work overtime and not stopping!
I stopped the operation and went snooping at my filesystem.....
The recursive delete operation was starting from C: drive root!!
My batch file had a flaw!!
I lost private documents, my music collection, family photos, WINDOWS system folders were destroyed
Whatever was left in memory was keeping my desktop alive, but my next reboot was going to be the last one!!
...and I had no backups :(