[HN Gopher] Study for best font for online reading: no single an...
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Study for best font for online reading: no single answer
Author : JW_00000
Score : 156 points
Date : 2022-04-25 15:13 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nngroup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nngroup.com)
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| For me the best font for reading online is on paper, outside, in
| the winter, Doves Type. Or SF Pro Rounded from Apple.
|
| If I can't read "online" by printing it on paper, I read on a
| well-calibrated display that casts the same light to all viewing
| angles, and 120Hz variable-refresh-rate. With macOS' font
| rendering.
|
| I'm sure this is a perfectly unique combination of "best".
| drBonkers wrote:
| What's your workflow for getting digital text into print?
|
| Additionally, what display do you use and how do you ensure
| it's calibrated?
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Ha!, it hadn't occurred to me to call it a workflow - but it
| is, I guess. Sometimes it's just hitting _Print_ in the
| browser. Sometimes I turn on Safari's Reader view and print
| that. For some reason, things printed on the Booklet setting
| tend to get read sooner. ("Booklet" is a macOS printing
| feature. It prints two pages on each sheets and orders them
| so the pile of paper can be keel-stapled into a booklet. Some
| printer drivers have it too, and Acrobat Reader as well I
| believe.)
|
| I try to have fonts set to those two ones I mentioned.
| Through overrides or preferences. On occasion I've converted
| to Markdown and applied a stylesheet. This seems to work. I
| read a bit more. Get around to it easier. It might be the
| ritual, it might be the result. Probably both.
|
| I tend to be quite picky about monitors, though I wish I
| wasn't. (It's a handicap, being this fussy!) The models I end
| up buying tend to be pretty well calibrated from the factory.
| LG IPS monitors are good. Right now I have an LG CX 55" OLED
| TV as my programming display. It is _very good_. It's fussy
| to set up; macOS doesn't support HDMI 2.1 so right now it
| isn't possible to get full, crisp 4:4:4 color and 120Hz at
| the same time. I go with 120Hz 4:2:0; Some color /background
| combos are noticeably blurry, but the fluidity of 120Hz is
| so, so nice. I don't agree with it or want it to be that way,
| but it is :)
|
| I want a color calibrator. Haven't got one yet. I have
| borrowed one on occasion from a photographer friend. I find
| that it makes a difference. There isn't a glaringly obvious
| difference, but everything feels tighter and more relaxed at
| the same time. Grays are more neutral, colors are more
| vividly themselves. It's easier on the brain? Kind of like
| putting fresh tires on a car. Or working in a quieter place.
| It adds up.
|
| Last time I looked at color calibration devices, the info
| over at the DisplayCAL site seemed to be very good:
| https://displaycal.net/
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| ... and I have an HP m254dw color laser printer that can
| print on both sides of the paper. It's been worth it! I
| read WAY more after buying it.
|
| And, heh, I feel obliged to mention the long-arm stapler
| too. I have a Zenith 502 long-arm stapler. It can easily
| keel-staple folded A4 or Letter paper. And it's a really
| good stapler. Staples everything, first try, also really
| thick bundles of paper. It's funny how big a difference a
| silly thing like a particular staper makes. They're made
| for a reason! Here's the Zenith 502 CUCITRICI DA TAVOLO:
| https://www.zenith.it/prodotti/cucitrici-da-
| tavolo/zenith-50...
|
| (Cucitrici - stapler - means "seamstress-er". Haha.)
| gnicholas wrote:
| Very interesting takeaways regarding different results among old
| and young:
|
| > _The takeaway is that, if your designers are younger than 35
| years but many of your users are older than 35, then you can't
| expect that the fonts that are the best for the designers will
| also be best for the users._
|
| > _the differences in reading speed between the different fonts
| weren't very big for the young users. Sure, some fonts were
| better, but they weren't much better. On the other hand, there
| were dramatic differences between the fastest font for older
| users (Garamond) and their slowest font (Open Sans). In other
| words, picking the wrong font penalizes older users more than
| young ones._
| ChristianGeek wrote:
| There was also the suggestion near the end to cut the number of
| words for older readers, which is just ridiculous.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I work in the world of dyslexia and assistive technology. I
| find it unfortunate that people (including folks who work on
| WCAG) emphasize using simple words and short sentences as the
| primary ways to accommodate dyslexic readers. These
| strategies are helpful in making text easier to understand,
| but they also undermine the nuance of communication. Before
| doing this, designers should think about how text is laid out
| so that it can be made maximally accessible in its original
| form.
| cheese_van wrote:
| I do have font preferences but my greater preference is
| background color. I've found that hex color #FEF0DF as a
| background tires me less. For reference, it's roughly the
| Financial Times background.
|
| Calibre allowing me to set the background color to my preference
| is a godsend for a heavy reader. HN's background is pretty good
| also. Anyone know the hex?
| jaredwiener wrote:
| #f6f6ef -- right in the HTML
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I think the parent was saying "I like a color somewhat
| similar to FT's background," not "I wish I could have FT's
| background color but I can't figure out how to get it."
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| GGP explicitly asked for the HN background color at the end
| of his comment.
| Sunspark wrote:
| HN's background is too light. Try #EDD1B0 instead (R 237 G 209
| B 176).
| layer8 wrote:
| > I do have font preferences but my greater preference is
| background color.
|
| Same here, I always want #000 on #FFF, so that I can take full
| advantage of my display's contrast ratio.
| pvinis wrote:
| Did we need a study for this?
|
| Next study: "Study for best colorscheme for coding: no single
| answer"..
|
| Kidding aside, it makes sense. No best option, just options
| optimized for different things.
| humanistbot wrote:
| Do you just hate scientific research or something?
| pvinis wrote:
| on the contrary, I think it's great. But I don't think it's
| beneficial for anyone when it's phrased as "looking for the
| best X", especially on things that are obviously not going to
| have a "best" thing, like fonts. Tradeoffs everywhere.
|
| Don't you think a title like "A comparison of fonts for
| online reading" or something would be more fitting?
| ad8e wrote:
| Big warning: their summary is "Among high-legibility fonts, a
| study found 35% difference in reading speeds between the best and
| the worst."
|
| This is completely wrong and comes from an abuse of statistics.
| See the original research at
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3502222#d1e6428
|
| An understandable explanation: imagine having 5 dice. You roll
| each die 4 times, then compare the highest sum to the lowest sum.
| Then you report that the highest die rolls 35% higher than the
| lowest. This is what the authors did, with each die being a font.
| But the experiment does not actually show evidence of any
| difference. If you rolled 500 dice, this method could claim that
| the highest dice are 200% higher than the lowest, even though all
| dice are still equal.
|
| The original authors seem aware of this shortcoming, but did it
| anyway: "we are somewhat stretching the applicability of a
| Cohen's d analysis for this data". This is likely because they
| did not know of a better method. But it is wrong to be pushing
| this analysis. The main author is from industry, so perhaps he
| was unaware that this effect can be corrected for, or that this
| type of misleading claim is malpractice. But someone in the chain
| of publishing - the journal editors, the reviewers, the large
| author list, or Jakob Nielsen who is promoting this - should have
| caught this. It is their main result!
|
| In the absence of legitimate statistics, the article's
| circumstances point to a failure to detect measurable differences
| between fonts. There are two ways fonts may be better than each
| other:
|
| 1. across the population, so that one font is better for everyone
|
| 2. personalized, so that different fonts are better for different
| people
|
| The first case should be easily detectable, and the second case
| should see some correlation between preference and speed because
| of a familiarity bias
| (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3502222#d1e7351). These are the
| Bayesian expectations I walked in with. Neither of these appear
| supported by the article, although I have only skimmed it.
|
| To be clear, the experiment does not give evidence that fonts
| perform equally either. It looks more likely that the experiment
| design failed.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Reading the article, what valuable things can we learn?
| Imperfection exists in everything in the universe - even the
| ideas in our minds we sometimes imagine to be ideal and
| perfect, but they turn imperfect as soon as we write them down
| (this cursed keyboard!). Imperfection does not destroy all
| value, or we live caves and aren't communicating using an
| imperfect alphabet and language, over imperfect signals, using
| imperfect power, etc etc. (in fact, we would be dead in the
| caves). Reading and learning from imperfection is the defintion
| of 'reading and learning', because there's nothing else to
| read.
|
| If I listened to HN comments, very little research would have
| value, very little information would be worth reading. The top
| comment is almost always of this nature; it's depressing to me
| that it gets so many upvotes, still, after we have so much
| experience on social media.
|
| > I have only skimmed it [the OP].
|
| Maybe that should be at the top of the comment. Imagine an OP
| which presented a detailed analysis and then, at the bottom,
| said 'I only skimmed the thing I analyzed' - imagine what the
| top comment would say.
| zwieback wrote:
| Never really thought about it before reading this article but I
| think I prefer different fonts for different content: strong
| preference for clean sans-serif mono fonts for coding, something
| like Arial for general purpose content and something old
| fashioned with serifs for literature/artsy content.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| This is like that Malcolm Gladwell story about the best spaghetti
| sauce. There is no one size fits all - different people like
| different things.
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_choice_happiness_...
| redmen wrote:
| I find it amazing that people ever think that there might be a
| one-size-fits-all solution to a subjective human experience.
|
| Spaghetti Sauce, Fonts.
|
| Sure no one likes dog crap in their sauce, so there are obvious
| experiences no one likes, but to assume that there is one
| single one that everyone likes?
|
| Sometimes we get so nearsighted that by reframing the question
| it seems obvious.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Who says there is one thing everyone likes best? (The OP says
| the opposite.)
| cupofpython wrote:
| We cant even agree on which water is best
| brewdad wrote:
| Water? You mean like in the toilet? What for?
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| It's probably about the font just being well designed, having
| consistent kerning ans whatnot.
|
| Same as with design guidelines. Every couple years something
| new comes along and is better than anything before.
|
| We had an intern a few years ago who was still working on his
| masters and also made some money on the side with "web stuff".
| He wouldn't stop talking about material design, how it is the
| best ever and how every margin and padding is scientifically
| proven to be perfect to the pixel, the blue they picked is
| perfection, how rounded corners and 3D effects on buttons are
| fatiguing to the eye, and so on and so on. I guess it was the
| first time this fellow consciously witnessed the release of a
| web design framework. It was near impossible to convince him
| that using bootstrap is just as good, and while certain rules
| for ratios between paddings, margins and font sizes exist it's
| much more important your theme is consistent, and that you
| apply it consistently.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| Came here to say "duhhh..." but the article is actually
| interesting, especially to those early web usability followers of
| Jacob Nielsen (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/author/jakob-
| nielsen/)
| Sunspark wrote:
| The answer to this question depends on the resolution of the
| display, the weight of the font, and a person's idiosyncrasies--
| e.g. nearsightedness.
|
| I use a different font for online reading, coding and reading
| ebook on high-resolution phone display.
|
| All 3 are different, and are different sizes and weights.. the
| purpose is different.
|
| You know what really helps?
|
| Don't have white as a background. I die now without the Dark
| Reader browser extension.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Don't have white as a background.
|
| That reduces contrast, which makes text harder to read for me.
| Today's prevalent IPS displays have a rather low contrast ratio
| (typically only 1:1000). Please don't lower it further by
| styling text as dark gray on light gray. If black on white
| looks too bright, you probably have set your screen brightness
| too high.
| [deleted]
| simion314 wrote:
| >Don't have white as a background.
|
| I would say that more important is to check your cool design in
| a normal screen and not on your super expensive designer
| monitor. Too often I see light gray text on light background,
| probably is only readable on the designer screen.
| brimble wrote:
| One of the worst things to happen to web usability was the shift
| away from the user deciding how pages look. In an ideal world the
| Web ecosystem would have grown up such that nearly all pages
| respect user configured font and color choices. Then, it wouldn't
| much matter which font the page creator decided was best, since
| the user's browser would automatically override it.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Every time i need to read some text longer than a few lines, I
| run Firefox Reader mode. It is great.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yeah the web was much more usable when you could change it with
| some simple and intuitive edits to .Xresources.
| brimble wrote:
| Yet theming with exactly two options (light/dark) is quite
| popular.
|
| It was a UX problem, not a problem with the core concept.
|
| _Now_ , decades in to The Web, it's also a chicken/egg
| problem, because almost no sites are designed to behave OK
| under reasonable customization by the user, and almost no
| users customize their browsers' default styles, so why would
| sites change to accommodate that? Aside from the light/dark
| thing, of course, and you _do_ see users pushing for support
| for that, and sites putting in effort to support it.
|
| If Apple expands Dark Mode to include a half-dozen other
| options for a11y and such, I bet you'd see support for those
| become fairly common. It's just got to have a decent UI and
| the push has to come from a browser with a large enough user-
| base to encourage site operators to care. Once upon a time,
| Firefox could likely have done it, assuming they could manage
| not to screw it up. These days, Apple, Google, and MS are the
| only ones who could realistically try.
|
| Actually, we have another version of this, now that I think
| about it: reader mode. People seem to really like it.
| pitaj wrote:
| This died mostly because the defaults were so terrible.
| new_stranger wrote:
| This died because convention > configuration
|
| Most users do not want to configure fonts or anything really
| to use the web.
| cupofpython wrote:
| I think it is deeper than personal want. i have a feeling
| that the more people communicate to each other about
| something, the more they value their personal experience to
| be relatable. Every customization makes your experience
| less relatable.
| brimble wrote:
| This could have ended up as a few simplified settings, as
| presented to most users... as we have with light and dark
| modes. Colorblind themes (for multiple kinds of
| colorblindness, say), high-readability themes for people
| who need the large-print editions of books, that kind of
| thing. Doesn't have to mean making everyone pick exact
| point values for every type of H tag, or whatever. A few
| presets in a dropdown could be really helpful--again, just
| look how everyone goes nuts over something as simple as
| having a "dark mode" setting.
| emzo wrote:
| This died when the web became mostly a marketing tool for
| businesses. It's a shame, but inevitable.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think it also died because styling could so easily destroy
| legibility. If text display areas were specifically designed
| with some fancy script like Helvetica in mind and I preferred
| Courier New the UI (if poorly designed) would often just
| break whole-sale.
| leephillips wrote:
| But all browsers can already do this. Most people don't enable
| that setting, however. Could either be because they prefer to
| see the site as it's intended to look, or because they're
| unaware of the setting.
| brimble wrote:
| That's because it's buried (and has been increasingly so over
| the decades), it'll mess up some sites and won't do anything
| on a bunch of others because no-one accounts for user-defined
| colors/margins/fonts anymore when designing for the web, and
| it has more options than most people want/need to deal with.
|
| A simple browser-provided theme dropdown containing a few
| nice options, directly in the main browser chrome, from a
| major browser (perhaps Firefox, back when it still counted as
| "major") could have changed things completely--see the
| pressure on sites to support "dark mode" now that that's a
| simple option to enable.
|
| It'd be nearly impossible to change now, but 10-15 years ago,
| _maybe_ it could have been changed, if any of the very small
| number of entities steering the direction of the web had
| tried.
| zwieback wrote:
| Good place to ask this: what about the "standard" academic paper
| font(s) from the LaTeX tradition. I hate it but it gives an
| immediate gravitas to anything.
| a-dub wrote:
| > The test stimuli were at an approximate 8th grade reading
| level, which matches our recommendation for web content targeted
| at a broad consumer audience.
|
| that's depressing to read. but i suppose different people have
| different strengths.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >that's depressing to read
|
| congratulations! Depressing reading is second year of college
| level!
| a-dub wrote:
| that's an even more depressing thought.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| tsk, nobody appreciates Sylvia Plath anymore.
| tasuki wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that Open Sans has the worst
| readability of all the tested fonts. I'm pretty sure the humanist
| Open Sans is faster to read than the geometric Avant Garde.
|
| With Garamond winning, what about Palatino and other old-style
| typefaces? There's a million generic sans-serifs in the study and
| not a single Didone? Mind, I wouldn't bet on it, but it'd be a
| more interesting comparison...
| nerdponx wrote:
| I wish this article included some discussion of serifs on "I" and
| generally of distinguishing "I" and "l". It's a shame that Clear
| Sans and Verdana were not included, because they do have a serif
| "I".
| magios wrote:
| as usual, it is up to personal preference, but I've used Unifont,
| specifically Unifont CSUR, a bitmap font, tho in ttf form, as my
| sole font across the system, terminal, vim and web browser
| (firefox) which allows me to enforce a singular font in webpages
| by disabling font downloads, rotation and scaling. for me, it
| appears that having text align to a grid and not have any
| annoying ligatures or oversized characters makes it more
| readable.
| leobg wrote:
| Much more important than the font, to me, is font size and line
| width. Plus, for anything of article length, ability to take and
| export highlights. That's why I import all longer form text into
| Voice Dream Reader. Browser just isn't the place for reading imo.
| illwrks wrote:
| 100%.
|
| Line length, line-height and text-size in relation to my
| distance to the screen are key to comfortable reading.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| I'm not sure the fonts are the sole consideration, anyway. Let's
| talk about diagrams.
|
| The original article (https://doi.org/10.1145/3502222) uses the
| click-a-thumbnail scheme for figures. I'm sure this is the
| decision of the journal, but it is really quite annoying, since
| you lose context.
|
| The actual figures are in the authors' control, however, and they
| are not very clear. Take Figure 2, for a start, which combines an
| overly small font and low-contrast colours, reducing legibility
| for no good reason that I can discern.
|
| The PDF is a lot easier to read, as is common with online
| journals.
|
| I'm not sure how many people will bother trying to read such a
| long document online, as it is formatted. But sometimes I think
| the point of such studies is simply to get cited, and this is an
| ideal paper from that point of view: the title states something
| that is likely obvious to most people, so this might get cited by
| quite a few people who don't bother to read the details.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I really like the readability of avionics screens and their
| recommendations. I like their simple, mostly monospaced fonts and
| the uncluttered display panes. I'd love if more monitoring
| applications used that.
|
| edit:
| https://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/advisory_circular/...
| has some interesting guidelines.
| copperx wrote:
| The lack of antialiasing in many avionics systems is highly
| detrimental for reading, in my opinion. The use of monospace
| makes numeric differences more salient, which I assume is a
| safety advantage. In any case, nobody is reading many words off
| avionics.
| rbanffy wrote:
| No. They are more related to the "glanceable" displays
| mentioned in the article.
| orlp wrote:
| You'll like https://b612-font.com then.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I actually dislike this font - it reminds me of Microsoft
| console fonts. I love its name, however.
| munk-a wrote:
| Their study excluded Courier New, how rude! But I love reading
| text with an absolute lack of kerning & multi-character sigils.
| (I mean this non-sarcastically just to be clear)
|
| I've always found that reading wide text comes at very little
| legibility cost, personally, so I try and consume data in mono-
| space whenever possible.
| paulpauper wrote:
| HN font is good
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| It is Verdana for those who wants to know the font in HN.
| jdrc wrote:
| the answer is verdana, but they didnt test it.
|
| I dont think this study is well done. Fonts are learned over
| time, and people's performance will improve, but differently.
| There's definitely certain fonts that are optimal.
| layer8 wrote:
| Seconding Verdana, especially on low-DPI screens.
| Daneel_ wrote:
| I agree. I couldn't help wondering while reading the article if
| older users are faster with serifed fonts and younger users are
| faster with sans-serif fonts, however they never touched on it.
| gen3 wrote:
| > A second interesting age-related finding from the new study
| is that different fonts performed differently for young and
| old readers. The authors set their dividing line between
| young and old at 35 years, which is a lower number than I
| usually employ, but possibly quite realistic given the age-
| related performance deterioration they measured.
|
| > 3 fonts were actually better for older users than for
| younger users: Garamond, Montserrat, and Poynter Gothic. The
| remaining 13 fonts were better for younger users than for
| older users, which is to be expected, given that younger
| users generally performed better in the study.
|
| They kinda did touch on it. From what I can see, letter
| sizing and kerning looks to make more of a difference.
| vikingerik wrote:
| I think the answer was Verdana years ago but not so much today
| with higher dpi screens. Verdana was designed for CRTs around
| 800x600, with wide letter forms and kerning, to get ample
| spacing between glyph elements. It's the champion of
| readability in that format, but on a modern 1920+ display with
| subpixel rendering rather than an aperture grill, Verdana feels
| too big and clunky.
| aggie wrote:
| Is there a better study you can point to? From what I remember
| looking into this topic the research has always provided
| ambiguous results with lots of context-dependence.
| layer8 wrote:
| The article doesn't address font rendering engines, screen DPI
| and panel type, and font size, which are important factors for
| which fonts work better than others. But they are right in the
| conclusion that user customization is needed.
| ZYinMD wrote:
| If you do CSS you'd know the best fonts for 16px isn't the best
| fonts for 18px, and definitely not the best fonts for H1 H2 etc.
|
| The Verdana font that HN and reddit uses are pretty good for
| reading in small text.
| cromniomancer wrote:
| antiterra wrote:
| > People read 11% slower for every 20 years they age.
|
| How can this be anywhere near a useful or accurate statistic?
| Surely the rates depend on the age, and there's likely space for
| significant improvement in someone's 20s.
|
| I can read in the neighborhood of 750wpm with good comprehension
| while verbalizing. I'm pretty sure I never was able to read at
| 900wpm no matter how many years you go back. I don't think
| there's been any meaningful drop at _all_ in the past 20 years.
| Further, in the next 20 years I wouldn't be surprised if my
| reading speed took a huge hit, say 30%-50% (or more.) Even if
| that averaged out to 10% per year, it would be a misleading
| statistic.
|
| That's also ignoring comprehension and reading level. At 30, I
| could focus throughout tearing through a Homeric epic and retain
| a huge amount about the text, including themes, symbolism,
| metaphors of note, etc. I couldn't do anything like that at 20,
| even if my raw reading speed was faster.
| Epiphany21 wrote:
| The characters we use to interact with our computers were mostly
| designed to be hand-written and minimize the amount of movement
| your hand has to make going from one letter to the next. I
| theorize that they don't translate all that well to existing
| display technologies. Not so much because of the shape of the
| fonts, but because format isn't conducive to sharing or receiving
| information as quickly as our machines and our wetware could
| allow.
|
| If you think about this a little more, programming is actually a
| way to overcome the limitations of spoken/written languages to an
| extent, since the machine can parse the text faster than you, and
| it can read other forms of data that are even more efficient. In
| my view a monitor displaying human-readable text is similar to a
| legacy ABI that's kept around because of the technical momentum
| and mindshare it has, not because it's particularly good.
| Psyladine wrote:
| >since the machine can parse the text faster than you
|
| You had me up until there; the machine doesn't know jack about
| text. It knows arrays and sequences of numbers according to the
| rules we've defined them by, for it.
|
| Yuo cna reda tihs raedliy btu teh copmtuer cna't. Your brain is
| trained by billions of years of evolution for symbolic parsing
| and pattern pairing, and language is just one flex of that
| muscle.
|
| Where computers thrive is where we've done the hard work to
| break down the syllabic system that is inherent to our biology
| into mathematical abstractions that can be computed by
| addition. Computers are great at solving problems we've already
| done, and repeating the steps, nothing more.
|
| Our machines are beautiful, well designed levers. But they
| don't move anything, they leverage our movement.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| >Yuo cna reda tihs raedliy btu teh copmtuer cna't.
|
| It would be interesting to see what GPT3 would do with this
| statement.
|
| Edit; just tried it. GPT-3 chatbot understood it instantly.
| Epiphany21 wrote:
| >Yuo cna reda tihs raedliy btu teh copmtuer cna't.
|
| Why can't it? Isn't that basically what current AI research
| is doing? Using massively parallel systems to make quick
| inferences based on existing data sets?
|
| >the machine doesn't know jack about text. It knows arrays
| and sequences of numbers according to the rules we've defined
| them by, for it.
|
| If you want to be pedantic and define a computer as the
| hardware only, sure. The operating system (which contains
| tools that can in fact parse text) is an essential component
| in the vast majority of computers in existence. So when I'm
| discussing computers as a complete, usable unit, then yes,
| they parse text.
|
| >Our machines are beautiful, well designed levers. But they
| don't move anything, they leverage our movement.
|
| Well said.
| skilled wrote:
| Isn't Georgia a very popular font? Interesting to see it isn't
| mentioned anywhere. It's the preferred font choice for me, but I
| know a lot of editorials also use it (or a variation of it).
| ghaff wrote:
| The font choices are a little odd.
|
| There are a number I'm not familiar with or have maybe heard of
| in passing. But probably Georgia and Verdana in particular seem
| to be missing.
|
| The delta between Helvetica and Arial also seems a little
| strange. Yes, there are a few type-nerd differences but AFAIK
| (feel free to correct) they're basically the same font.
| laristine wrote:
| I like that the article about best reading font research itself
| has Arial as its font.
| ggm wrote:
| depends what you're reading. fixed-width fonts make some inputs
| easier, like code, and data. So if the word "read" means solely
| flow text, I can buy an argument the pretty fonts have value
| which goes to character recognition, kerning, ligatures and the
| role of caps and serif.
|
| If the word "read" includes "do a rapid scan of a column of data
| to confidence check it makes sense" or "find the longest number
| (==longest string) in a list of unsorted numbers" then fixed
| width will score higher than almost any other quality in my
| opinion.
|
| My reading of the history of fonts suggests some people thought
| italianate styled writing was a mistake. florid, and hard to
| read. to my eyes gothic is sometimes impenetrably hard to read.
| dandongus wrote:
| Personally speaking, I think it's kind of silly that this article
| neither mentioned screen resolution nor the font rendering
| differences inherent to various operating systems.
| timonoko wrote:
| 1. xkcd-script.ttf
|
| 2. Opera Lyrics Smooth
|
| 3. Crete Round
|
| All others should be banned. Especially creepy spidery fonts on
| some ebooks.
| tristor wrote:
| The default font on a Kindle, Bookerly, is pretty great,
| honestly. Of the ones in the article, I think Lato suits me best.
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