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Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

practicaltypography.com

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Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#131

Post by michaelcampbell »

artsyca wrote: post #71

To me this conversation is more about popular opinions in general and how many of them persist as a result of ubiquity over any sort of merit Times Roman is just another example of the defaults becoming the standard and we've all been trained to know the defaults serve hardly anyone yet we keep hammering away at them relentlessly as if they'll give us anything but default outcomes

I love every article that comes up on HN/reddit about typography and fonts because the inevitable onslaught of "I find X unreadable and Y delightful because of Z" gives me new fonts to try.

There is some objectiveness to this subject but damned little and 99% of the comments are opinion. As a developer of many years, I've learned to just skip over any post that uses any form of the 'readability' adjective. It's totally subjective, and the poster more often than not will have a religious fervor about their opinion.

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#132

Post by michaelcampbell »

xupybd wrote: post #26

I really can't tell between a good font and a bad one. I have no idea how to develop a sense for good typography despite recognising it's importance.

This may be the most honest post in this thread. Bravo. (I'm with you; I know what I like and don't pretend my opinion is any more than that.)

Look how many posts here use emotionally charged words like "unreadable", "love", "hate", "loathe", "abomination", etc.

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#133

Post by artsyca »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #131
artsyca wrote: post #71

To me this conversation is more about popular opinions in general and how many of them persist as a result of ubiquity over any sort of merit Times Roman is just another example of the defaults becoming the standard and we've all been trained to know the defaults serve hardly anyone yet we keep hammering away at them relentlessly as if they'll give us anything but default outcomes

I love every article that comes up on HN/reddit about typography and fonts because the inevitable onslaught of "I find X unreadable and Y delightful because of Z" gives me new fonts to try. There is some objectiveness to this subject but damned little and 99% of the comments are opinion. As a developer of many years, I've learned to just skip over any post that uses any form of the 'readability' adjective. It's total…

Strong opinions held loosely.

For a lot of us fonts were a key selling point of early computing and there's a story about Steve Jobs taking in design courses in fonts as an inspiration for the design of the Mac operating system.

The whole concept of fonts on the machine is another example of the message in the new medium essentially encapsulating the old.

Fonts are an important tradition going back to the printing press and we are rightfully protective of them.

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#134

Post by tmcw »

tmcw wrote: post #128
jakear wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those (almost) all do reasonably well where most “minimalist” sites fail, accessibility. Many developers seem to get a kick out of “not caring about design”, as some sort of point of pride, but at the same time put in just enough CSS to screw over the visually-disabled. HN, for instance, can’t be zoomed in iOS. Also, the above macwright cuts off the titles to make room for the Dates, so to me the site looks like: Rec…

Thanks for identifying that issue. I'll try to find a solution for folks who are using iOS + increased font sizes. It's going to be a little tricky, so if anyone has found a solution let me know - I haven't been able to find a way to reliably detect text size adjustments on iOS and the truncation behavior is desired at smaller font sizes. Definitely will try and find a way to make it work.

Okay, I couldn't find a way to change the layout when text size is controlled so I'll change it for all viewers if they're using a small device (under 640px wide, scaled). It works in my testing on an iPhone, but let me know if it works for you!

https://5ed7d94981b55b0008f07a3b--macwright.netlify.app/

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#135

Post by boromi »

tmcw wrote: post #134
tmcw wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for identifying that issue. I'll try to find a solution for folks who are using iOS + increased font sizes. It's going to be a little tricky, so if anyone has found a solution let me know - I haven't been able to find a way to reliably detect text size adjustments on iOS and the truncation behavior is desired at smaller font sizes. Definitely will try and find a way to make it work.

Okay, I couldn't find a way to change the layout when text size is controlled so I'll change it for all viewers if they're using a small device (under 640px wide, scaled). It works in my testing on an iPhone, but let me know if it works for you! https://5ed7d94981b55b0008f07a3b--macwright.netlify.app/

Are you still using Hugo? I'm thinking about trying Gatsby .

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#137

Post by jakear »

tmcw wrote: post #134
tmcw wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for identifying that issue. I'll try to find a solution for folks who are using iOS + increased font sizes. It's going to be a little tricky, so if anyone has found a solution let me know - I haven't been able to find a way to reliably detect text size adjustments on iOS and the truncation behavior is desired at smaller font sizes. Definitely will try and find a way to make it work.

Okay, I couldn't find a way to change the layout when text size is controlled so I'll change it for all viewers if they're using a small device (under 640px wide, scaled). It works in my testing on an iPhone, but let me know if it works for you! https://5ed7d94981b55b0008f07a3b--macwright.netlify.app/

Looks good, thanks!

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#138

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

In addition to appearance, there are of course potentially other constraining factors in font choice, depending on your use case.

For instance, I need a good 'editor' font which is both monospace and supports combining diacritics well, for writing papers in LaTeX in Emacs.

And I need good 'display' fonts for the PDF output of those LaTeX documents, which also of course have to support a wide range of combining diacritics well.

For both use cases, there is a surprisingly small range of choices given the full set of constraints.

[Details here: https://babbagefiles.xyz/beautiful-and-free-typefaces/ ]

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#139

Post by tmcw »

boromi wrote: post #135
tmcw wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I couldn't find a way to change the layout when text size is controlled so I'll change it for all viewers if they're using a small device (under 640px wide, scaled). It works in my testing on an iPhone, but let me know if it works for you! https://5ed7d94981b55b0008f07a3b--macwright.netlify.app/

Are you still using Hugo? I'm thinking about trying Gatsby .

I only use Jekyll for macwright.org - haven't really used Hugo or Gatsby much.

Re: Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

#140

Post by thomasahle »

Veen wrote: post #107
thomasahle wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navigating PT for the first time wasn't as easy as the examples given above though. Links were just plain black with no decoration, making me have to guess at every click what was navigation.

They're plain black but internal links are indicated with small caps and external links with Butterick's odd red degree symbol°. It seems to me to sufficiently distinguish them.

Honestly, I hadn't noticed any of the links in the text. I was merely referring to the links on the front page.

Those red circle links are particularly tricky to spot. You have no idea how many of the words prior to the circle are part of the link, so your best option is to try and click the tiny circle.

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