Live data from Hacker News

Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri

twitter.com

101–110 of 267 posts

Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri

#101
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liberation Sans would be so on brand for the USA too

The Microsoft empire is bigger than several nation states. IBM research used to examine UX. The IBM top brass deciding to pay over $35B+ for a UNIX-like when they have an authentic UNIX of their very own which is going to a boneyard in India suggests that kind of UX research isn't front of mind and funded to decide which font is best.

What does AIX have to do with this? It wasn't exactly at the forefront of UX research even before Red Hat existed at all.

Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri

#102
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from licensing, usability studies show that serif fonts are more legible than sans serif fonts, so I have no idea where they came up with the idea that somehow they're harder to read for people with disabilities when all prior research I'm aware of has shown the opposite.

I vaguely remember something about there being a difference on printed paper vs screens when it comes to serifs. But also, aren't most aircraft controls labeled in something like Futura? I believe the Apollo program and other aerospace studies decided that was the most legible.

Reading a control label is very different from reading a paper or onscreen memo.

Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri

#104

How are they planning to deal with the I-l issue? Hope that it never comes up?

My browser renders this in sans serif, but adds serifs to I. I'm on firefox/linux and it's defaulting to the css `sans-serif` and I don't have the energy to research how to find what that defaults to right now.

Yes, but this isn't all that helpful with printed documents.

Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri

#106
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone is unaware, A0 is 1m^2 in size, and each adjacent number is half the size (i.e. A1 = 500 000 mm^2, A2 = 250 000 mm^2, A3 = 125 000 mm^2, A4 = 62 500 mm^2). This has the great advantage of allowing documents to be easily up and down-scaled on a photocopier - i.e. an A3 document can be printed at 50% scale on an A4 sheet. I wonder if anyone ever tried to do something similar with imperial units (AKA Engl…

You're correct, but also forgetting the best part. The ratio between width and length stays the same!! This specifically is what allows easy up-/downscaling for an A* size.

I guess the key thing actually is that the width of A(n) is the same as the height of A(n+1).

Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri

#107

As one of the very few moon dwellers who finds Calibri fucking blinding to read, I hate this. Times New Roman all day every day, or any of Arial/Tahoma/Verdana for sans serif.

I don't understand the love for Times New Roman honestly. Any type of antiqua is better if you ask me.

Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri

#108
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8.5”x11” is a standard size for the US and Canada, but not for the rest of the world. Which leads to the eternal problems for any NGOs or contractors working for the US government overseas who have to source Letter size for US gov partners and A4 for local partners!

Yep. Every time I have to renew my Australian passport I have to buy a ream of A4 paper. Every time I forget where last time's ream was stored. I suspect someday I'll find thousands of sheets somewhere lost in my basement.

The trick is, next time you need it, make note of where you first look for it, and when your acquire more, put the newly acquired paper on the first spot you looked for the old stuff.

Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri

#109
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from licensing, usability studies show that serif fonts are more legible than sans serif fonts, so I have no idea where they came up with the idea that somehow they're harder to read for people with disabilities when all prior research I'm aware of has shown the opposite.

Yes! This a thousand times. Many universities I know now discourage sans-serif fonts for screen reasons and prefer Arial because one study showed a slight preference for those who were dyslexic. The evidence is far from strong [1] and frankly I feel like doing a meta-analysis of it in my spare time. I really, really, really dislike Arial and find it harder to read than others. [1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q…

I'm puzzled why sans-serif fonts would be discouraged for screen reasons. My understanding is that serif fonts are more visibly degraded than sans-serif fonts on low-resolution displays.

Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri

#110
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd have to install that font to every machine, and Calibri is already there.

There are libre fonts with the same metrics as Calibri. Ditto with Arial and Times.

Are they (or any other libre font) on every Windows/Office by default?
Post reply on HN