[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] More topics font related

[Walter Bender]

I am a bit late to the conversation... but a few observations, most of
which have already been made:

(1) We too did pretty extensive studies of the impact font style and
design on reading back in the mid-80s. Our conclusions were that Serif
vs San-Serif was pretty much in the noise. However, Monospace was
harder to read as it distorts the overall word shape.

(2) The primary focus of our work was to study the impact of
anti-aliasing on reading. Big positive impact, although I don't think
anyone today is disputing that. But it remains paramount that we
provide a great reading experience.

(3) Font designers have often targeted specific tasks and devices and
there has been a rich history of interplay between design and
technology. Relevant to our work would be to consider some of the
tasks:

 * young readers I: maybe a font that is all upper case or all lower
case (there is a relevant ticket [1] still open on this).
 * young readers II: it has been argued (in OZ) that the shape of the
lower-case A can be confusing and they have proposed a font to
mitigate the problem (See discussion at [2])
 * at one point, I designed a font for programming that made more
pronounced visual distinctions between, for example, colon and
semi-colons. There are such fonts available today. (See [3] as an
example.)
 * i18n: As CJL has pointed out, glyph coverage is very important to
our audience
 * Sometimes typography is used for expression: We should make sure
that we provide some degrees of freedom in this regard. (See [4] for
example)

So where does this leave us: One size does not fit all.

regards.

-walter


[1] http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/878
[2] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2012-January/014825.html
[3] http://wpengineer.com/2150/linux-programming-fonts/
[4] http://acrisdesign.com/2010/01/wow-typography-art/

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org