[HN Gopher] Din 1450, recommended for barrier-free reading
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Din 1450, recommended for barrier-free reading
Author : JdeBP
Score : 64 points
Date : 2023-05-26 08:41 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.linotype.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.linotype.com)
| jph wrote:
| Blue Highway is a font with a similar purpose of roadway
| readability:
|
| https://www.dafont.com/blue-highway.font
|
| "Blue Highway is a sans-serif design inspired by the FHWA Series
| of Standard Alphabets, popularly known as Highway Gothic, from
| the United States Department of Transportation."
| OJFord wrote:
| Oof, that lowercase 'g'... Is it just me or does it look
| completely out of place, like it's from a different font?
| JdeBP wrote:
| Strictly speaking, Blue Highway, like Expressway, Interstate,
| Traffic, Overpass, and several others, is _inspired by_ the
| U.S. federal standard. Although a font expert with a magnifying
| glass is probably required to spot some of the differences, I
| suspect. (-:
|
| * https://typodermicfonts.com/expressway/
|
| * https://www.fonts4free.net/traffic-11027-font.html
|
| * https://github.com/RedHatOfficial/Overpass
| quink wrote:
| So a separate font for features that should be OpenType
| variations. Glad to see that spirit is still alive over at
| Linotype.
|
| Meanwhile in the real world, Inter is still widely rising, with
| lots of OpenType variations and variable weights.
| geoffharcourt wrote:
| This site is completely unusable on my phone's browser.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| One of the important differences seems to be more open shapes on
| such as c, e, 6 and 9. This is a major improvement; I've never
| understood why so many fonts curl around so far as they do,
| because it definitely harms distinctions.
|
| They've introduced dotted zero in Neue Frutiger 1450, which I
| presume means DIN 1450 specifies some such thing. This confuses
| me, because the ambiguity it introduces with 8 is _much_ worse
| (for frequency of relevance) than the ambiguity it resolves with
| O (capital o). Coding monospaces can benefit from dotted or
| slashed zeroes, and variable-stroke-width serifs can get quite a
| nice thin slash which makes it clearly neither 8 nor O, but in
| uniform-stroke-width sans-serifs designed for general-purpose
| language usage, I've just never understood why anyone would do
| it. It's _obviously_ worse.
| JdeBP wrote:
| The _Unterscheidbarkeit von Schriftzeichen und Ziffern_ section
| of the standard appears to be the right place to look.
| prox wrote:
| It's funny because for all the talk of legibility, the text cuts
| off on my iPad.
| weinzierl wrote:
| On Safari on iPhone as well.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I work in GMP manufacturing of drugs now (every word and letter
| has to be copied and transcribed over and over perfectly through
| the whole process) and it has really revealed to me how bizarre
| the English alphabet is from a getting text right standpoint. Is
| that a 0 or O on this copy of a copy of some text or handwriting
| I'm reading? Is it an l or I or 1? Is that a 7? Hard to know
| since putting the horizontal tick mark in the middle of the 7
| isn't allowed there. This font makes some good changes I wish
| were implemented everywhere.
| dhalucario wrote:
| This site is about barrier free reading but I can't read it on my
| phone.
| dvh wrote:
| $500 for a font? Is this an ad?
| jstummbillig wrote:
| This is how comprehensive font families are priced.
|
| https://www.fontshop.com/families/neue-helvetica/buy
|
| Idk. Font pricing always felt wrong -- but then again, it is
| incredibly painstaking and specialized work to design one.
| dgellow wrote:
| That's not too expensive for a niche professional font like
| this one.
| smarx007 wrote:
| Atkinson Hyperlegible [1] is a great free alternative, I think.
|
| https://brailleinstitute.org/freefont
| JdeBP wrote:
| A U.S. institution has probably not considered DIN 1450
| conformance, but it would be interesting if it turned out that
| it was conformant.
|
| The Bigelow & Holmes Go fonts claim DIN 1450 conformance.
|
| * https://go.dev/blog/go-fonts
| ChatGTP wrote:
| This site is totally unreadable on Firefox for iOS , which is
| ironic .
| Topolomancer wrote:
| Meta: Ironic how the website does not render correctly in Google
| Chrome on Android. I feel that web design has become rather
| complicated these days, but surely it's not an impossible task to
| make websites work for more than one device?
| abujazar wrote:
| Same on Safari for iPhone... The page is completely illegible.
| dgellow wrote:
| I basically had a blank page, but using the reader mode you
| can read the content
| Mizoguchi wrote:
| This is the reason why front end developers command so much
| money. The amount of work required to keep a website without
| breaking every year or two is ridiculous. And every time you
| want to update a dependency that's at least a full day of work.
| Compare that to backend software written in Cobol or Fortran
| that is still supporting critical infrastructure and services
| like manufacturing and finance with little to no modifications
| to the codebase in decades, except for maybe APIs to interface
| with modern applications and UIs, and these APIs don't change
| much either.
| prox wrote:
| It's not complicated if you are a pro, but this is probably
| just laziness or an intern or something similar happening.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| If you have to be a pro to make a website that works....
| xctr94 wrote:
| Modern development is complex enough that we do pay
| _professionals_ to know how to handle all /most of the edge
| cases.
| ok_computer wrote:
| ios safari here, I could not read a single word everything was
| left justified and blocked by a white gutter. Lol, will not
| trust their readability opinions.
| jaclaz wrote:
| ... and with javascript disabled I get an inaccessible error
| from Cloudflare (error 1020), would that also count as
| "barrier"?
| JdeBP wrote:
| The actual DIN 1450:2013-04 standard is available from the likes
| of https://www.beuth.de/en/standard/din-1450/170093157 .
| maxnoe wrote:
| Missed opportunity to introduce the term Keming
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _Monotype fonts, which have been specially adapted to these
| recommendations, carry the name affix, "1450"._
|
| None of those commas should be present, and they significantly
| change the meaning of the sentence. With them (especially the
| first), it means that _all_ Monotype fonts have been specially
| adapted to these recommendations and carry The Name Affix, which
| is "1450". The commas serve equivalently to parentheses:
| "Monotype fonts (which have been specially adapted to these
| recommendations) carry the name affix ( "1450")."
|
| What they _meant_ was: "Monotype fonts which have been specially
| adapted to these recommendations carry the name affix "1450"."
| That is: the subset of Monotype fonts so adapted are identified
| by the presence of the "1450" name affix.
|
| A remark like this would normally be off-topic on HN, but I
| mention it because (a) the line threw me, for a couple of
| readings, and I only resolved it because I know Monotype fonts
| have been round much longer than this DIN 1450 thing and by
| inference from the next sentence; and (b) correct language usage
| is at least as important as font when it comes to "barrier-free
| reading".
|
| Some of the other commas in the article are also wrong in the
| same and similar ways. I'm curious whether there might be
| something about comma usage or sentence structure in the native
| language of the author, which I'm guessing isn't English. (There
| are a few other mildly unusual or clumsy word choices and
| sentence structures, and a few minor errors. Given the context,
| probably German.)
| stumblers wrote:
| They're using the words "Monotype Fonts" as a type shop, a
| brand, a company...I forget which but I set type decades ago
| and remember the name. They're not referring to 'monotype
| fonts' as a type of font, like serif or sans serif.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Perhaps because nouns are usually capitalized in German.
|
| Seriously tho, does it really matter that much? There are
| native English speakers who write worse than that.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| It matters that if you are writing illegibly even the ultra
| legible typeface is not going to help that much
| mannykannot wrote:
| I feel the issue applies in this case also, unless all of
| Monotype Fonts' fonts are DIN 1450 fonts.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Even worse, when reading this sentence in the comments, I
| thought it was referring to _monospace_ coding fonts, which
| happen to share the same "legibility features" as required
| by DIN 1450 (tailed l, dotted 0, etc.)
| JdeBP wrote:
| It's fairly obviously primarily targetting a German market.
| There are no French and Spanish versions, and I suspect that
| the English version is there as the fallback for whatever
| international market there is.
|
| The German language version has fewer commas:
|
| * https://www.linotype.com/de/6990/din-1450.html
|
| I wonder how badly Hacker News would have coped with a
| submission in German. (-:
| Eduard wrote:
| "Schriften von Monotype, die speziell an diese Empfehlungen
| angepasst wurden, tragen den Namenszusatz ,,1450"."
| [deleted]
| pavlov wrote:
| The commas around the "which" clause seem to follow German
| rules for embedded subordinate clauses:
|
| https://www.germanveryeasy.com/comma
| fnord77 wrote:
| the only extraneous comma is after "affix"
| adrianmonk wrote:
| No, the first two commas are extraneous as well.
|
| From https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/usage-of-
| essen... :
|
| > _Essential clauses modify key words and are important to
| the main point of a sentence. Nonessential clauses provide
| superfluous information that, while interesting, does not
| change the main point of a sentence. Nonessential clauses are
| offset by punctuation such as commas or parentheses to
| indicate the clause as an aside._
|
| With the commas, it is a nonessential clause, which means the
| meaning should stay the same if it is removed. And that would
| turn the sentence into this:
|
| > _Monotype fonts carry the name affix "1450"._
|
| But that isn't the meaning of the sentence. It's not true
| that Monotype fonts (all of them, in general) have "1450" in
| their names. Only the ones that follow the recommendation do.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| This is the kind of assertive falseness I associate with
| ChatGPT!
| hommelix wrote:
| > Some of the other commas in the article are also wrong in the
| same and similar ways. I'm curious whether there might be
| something about comma usage or sentence structure in the native
| language of the author, which I'm guessing isn't English.
| (There are a few other mildly unusual or clumsy word choices
| and sentence structures, and a few minor errors.)
|
| Yes this translation from German. The comma fits the way German
| grammar recommends it. Some other clues: DIN is a German
| standard organization and the company advertising this new font
| is a German Ltd (GmbH).
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Perhaps the translator was American. A lot of American text
| looks like a pepper shaker full off commas was upended over
| it.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| At least we don't have all these 'u's polluting our words!
| I'll die before I spell 'color' differently!
|
| :)
| grey_earthling wrote:
| > "Monotype fonts which have been specially adapted to these
| recommendations carry the name affix "1450"."
|
| Even this isn't wholly clear. They should have said:
|
| > "Monotype fonts that have been specially adapted to these
| recommendations carry the name affix "1450"."
|
| The word "that" _defines_ the subject of the sentence; the word
| "which" _describes_ the already-defined subject. This is a rule
| of thumb usually expressed as: "'that' defines; 'which'
| describes".
| projektfu wrote:
| Monotype "1450" fonts are specially adapted to these
| recommendations.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36092771
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| If we're going to be pedantic about language use (and it
| appears that we are): "cf" is short for the Latin for
| "compare [with]". To me, that only makes sense when the
| reference is something very analogous, e.g. you're talking
| about caramelising onions and you cite an article about
| caramelising carrots. Most of the time it's used, including
| this time, it would be more appropriate to just say "see
| also".
| the-printer wrote:
| See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36038796
| djbusby wrote:
| Or use 'nb' - nota bene
| meghan_rain wrote:
| This entire thread is peak HN lmao
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| TIL -- going forward I'll use _see_ for 'compare' and
| _cf_ for 'contrast'
| mannykannot wrote:
| As this sentence immediately follows a paragraph introducing
| the new standard, I would probably go with something like "The
| affix '1450' is used to designate those monotype fonts which
| have been specially adapted to these recommendations."
|
| Now I am wondering if the different rules for verb placement in
| German and English contribute to the difficulty of punctuating
| translations unambiguously.
| jhgb wrote:
| What you're seeing here is absolutely English written by a
| German. In German, restrictive clauses are separated by commas.
| This language feature seeps into English written by Germans by
| means of interference.
| picklebarrel wrote:
| I find it hilarious that after clicking on a link about "barrier
| free reading" on my phone, I'm taken to a page with 3 sections:
| the left section is entirely blank, the right section has about 8
| words in an enormous font, and the bottom section has the left
| half of a cookie permission pop-up.
| sakex wrote:
| Given how this site looks on mobile, I'm not sure I can trust
| their opinion on barrier-free reading
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(page generated 2023-05-27 23:02 UTC)