Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 50 posts

Re: First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography

#21

Post by aaronbrethorst »

windsurfer wrote: post #14
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #12

Great to see! Along the same lines, can anyone shed any light on why Gnome's settings for padding around UI elements is set to such a high value? (compare to OS X, which has very minimal padding around most UI elements).

The padding is there to make the interface cleaner. It forces developers to be more concise with their components as well as making navigation easier for users. Keep in mind Gnome is meant to be easy to use, not easy on the screen real-estate. If you want a minimalist UI, there are a million alternatives in linux land

That's a laudable goal, but it seems like it just wastes space. I don't want minimalism, I want greatness.

Re: First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography

#22

Post by audidude »

Groxx wrote: post #19
audidude wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the window title uses the bold font which it says is unfinished.

Are you sure? > The bold weight is still being designed and isn't available yet. [ars] and > For now, only the regular is available for testing, bold comes next. [ http://design.canonical.com/2010/07/the-ubuntu-font/ ] Sounds like it might be another font entirely, especially as the whole font is still in beta, but it mentions bold separately that way. But I could be wrong.

right, i used the wrong article. "a" instead of "the". point being, metacity/gtk-window-decorator by default use "a" bold font for the title bar and therefore is either a) not finished b) not it.

Re: First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography

#23

Post by macco »

naner wrote: post #16
noahlt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Linux typography isn't a lack of fonts, it's bad rendering. I can buy a font from Adobe. I can't buy a better font renderer for Linux.

The funny part is that all the pieces (FreeType, HarfBuzz, Pango) are really well done, just FreeType isn't tweaked properly. :/

What do you mean, with tweaked properly? Tweaked by developer oder user? BTW I think the droid fonts and dejaWeb look fucking awesome on my loptop. Much better than the fonts on my Windows maschine at work

Re: First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography

#24

Post by sandGorgon »

noahlt wrote: post #8
jp_sc wrote: post #5

"Un s a ve d D o cu m e n t 1 - g e d it"... Maybe the kerning is the next thing to improve

The problem with Linux typography isn't a lack of fonts, it's bad rendering. I can buy a font from Adobe. I can't buy a better font renderer for Linux.

+1 This (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1239067) is a question that I posed to Ubuntu brainstorm. The font hinting and rendering patents (held by Apple/Microsoft) are supposedly expired, therefore opening up the way for Freetype to jump ahead by leaps and bounds.

Maybe a little money could be spent on patent due diligence.

Re: First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography

#25

Post by felxh »

windsurfer wrote: post #14
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #12

Great to see! Along the same lines, can anyone shed any light on why Gnome's settings for padding around UI elements is set to such a high value? (compare to OS X, which has very minimal padding around most UI elements).

The padding is there to make the interface cleaner. It forces developers to be more concise with their components as well as making navigation easier for users. Keep in mind Gnome is meant to be easy to use, not easy on the screen real-estate. If you want a minimalist UI, there are a million alternatives in linux land

I always wondered about that myself. How exactly do huge UI elements make an UI cleaner and easier to use (we are not talking about touch screens or accessibility features here)? I would say that proper spacing and layout/grouping are much more important for designing a clean UI.

Re: First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography

#26

Post by man1sh »

windsurfer wrote: post #14
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #12

Great to see! Along the same lines, can anyone shed any light on why Gnome's settings for padding around UI elements is set to such a high value? (compare to OS X, which has very minimal padding around most UI elements).

The padding is there to make the interface cleaner. It forces developers to be more concise with their components as well as making navigation easier for users. Keep in mind Gnome is meant to be easy to use, not easy on the screen real-estate. If you want a minimalist UI, there are a million alternatives in linux land

No, seriously. The padding is just too much, to the level that it wastes space.I know too much clutter is bad, but that doesn't mean GNOME people have to increase the padding to this extent.

Can we have a middle ground for padding? Nor too less, nor too much.

Re: First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography

#27

Post by volomike »

The font looks too Star-Trekkie, somewhat Romulan in fact. Nice for a logo, but sucks to see that on all the windows.

Remember Nautilus? There was a particular version of Ubuntu that shipped where Nautilus folder doubleclicks kept opening new windows rather than using the same window. DID NOT WANT. And unfortunately Ubuntu shipped with that. The community pushed it back, and so in the next release they knocked that off. So let's hope they don't ship this font as the standard default font.

I appreciate them trying to improve the interface, but forcing everyone from right closing windows to left was too drastic in 10.04 LTS. I quickly reverted back to Clearlooks.

Re: First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography

#28

Post by burriko »

windsurfer wrote: post #14
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #12

Great to see! Along the same lines, can anyone shed any light on why Gnome's settings for padding around UI elements is set to such a high value? (compare to OS X, which has very minimal padding around most UI elements).

The padding is there to make the interface cleaner. It forces developers to be more concise with their components as well as making navigation easier for users. Keep in mind Gnome is meant to be easy to use, not easy on the screen real-estate. If you want a minimalist UI, there are a million alternatives in linux land

This has bothered me for years. Everything just looks so chunky and inelegant. The difference really hits home if you compare Rhythmbox and iTunes (OS X version, not Windows) side by side. Rhythmbox just appears to be wasting so much space.

Arguing that it makes the interface cleaner might seem correct in theory, but in practice it really doesn't seem to hold true. Especially when you compare to OS X, which has an extremely clean interface without any over padding of elements.

Re: First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography

#29

Post by heresy »

burriko wrote: post #28
windsurfer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The padding is there to make the interface cleaner. It forces developers to be more concise with their components as well as making navigation easier for users. Keep in mind Gnome is meant to be easy to use, not easy on the screen real-estate. If you want a minimalist UI, there are a million alternatives in linux land

This has bothered me for years. Everything just looks so chunky and inelegant. The difference really hits home if you compare Rhythmbox and iTunes (OS X version, not Windows) side by side. Rhythmbox just appears to be wasting so much space. Arguing that it makes the interface cleaner might seem correct in theory, but in practice it really doesn't seem to hold true. Especially when you compare to OS X, which has an ex…

In addition to the excessive padding, what bothers me, is that the typeface choices in Linux are so oversized and ugly.

And the way Linux renders Segoe UI is ghastly compared to the Windows rendering.

If you want a smaller font size, you're out of luck since the padding seems to be assuming that you're going to have those big 5/20 vision fonts, so your buttons have a tiny bit of text in the middle, and acres of space round them.

Re: First look: new Ubuntu font boosts Linux typography

#30

Post by nailer »

macco wrote: post #23
naner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny part is that all the pieces (FreeType, HarfBuzz, Pango) are really well done, just FreeType isn't tweaked properly. :/

What do you mean, with tweaked properly? Tweaked by developer oder user? BTW I think the droid fonts and dejaWeb look fucking awesome on my loptop. Much better than the fonts on my Windows maschine at work

Tweaked by the packager, who thinks the hinting patents are still valid and hence disables decent hinting during compilation.
Post reply on HN