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

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

#221

Post by MengerSponge »

mbreese wrote: post #189
dhosek wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 80s at UIC, there was famously a woman in the graduate school who checked measurements of all margins and other spacing with a ruler and rejected dissertations which didn’t meet the strict requirements.

In the early 2000s there was a person at Indiana U who also did this. You had to get any dissertation approved by her before printing. And there was a ruler. Are PDFs accepted for dissertations yet?

Dissertations go through the library's Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) service these days. Margins still matter, as do tons and tons of fiddly bullshit.

My personal ETD "hilarity": there is/was a bug in Adobe Acrobat that caused the font I set my dissertation in to glitch/look jagged at exactly 100% zoom. If you shifted to 99.7% or 100.1%? It re-rendered and looked perfect. Only on Acrobat. Not in Chrome or Firefox or Preview or Foxit or anything else. I had to change the font for ETD to accept my document.

Changing the font doesn't sound like a big deal, and in principle it's easy to do, but it means none of the figures match the main text. The line breaks are now totally different, so those typeset line-endings and paragraphs that were rephrased to avoid awkward hyphenations? All gone.

For that and a few other more important reasons, I have two versions of my dissertation. There's the one hosted by ETD, and the one that I actually share and use professionally.

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

#222

Post by int_19h »

generationP wrote: post #107
Dalewyn wrote: post #105

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.

It was the default font in Word for a very long time.

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

#223

Post by gfv »

dahfizz wrote: post #209
RealStickman_ wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How often do you need to scale up or down a printed document? I don't see how that is useful.

You may want to print multiple pages per sheet.

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

#224

Post by pleb_nz »

vorpalhex wrote: post #119
ethbr0 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep within your subconscious memories is a series of you unloading A4 from your printer, thinking about where to best store it, finding 20 reams already there, stacking this one on top, and then promptly forgetting the location.

"I don't put things where I think they should go, I put them where I am likely to look for them" - Adam Savage

I'd be better off putting them where I wouldn't look, that's probably where I'd look.

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

#225

Post by robin_reala »

tomrod wrote: post #199
robin_reala wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Disabilities” is an extremely wide spectrum, and it’s pointless to try to group people on that scale.

Let me introduce a term to your venacular that will serve you well: 508 compliance.

Not sure I get your point?

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

#226

Post by Moru »

atonse wrote: post #160
LarryMullins wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> metric [...] morally evil I've never heard an American complain that Coca Cola is sold by the liter. There's no moral component to Americans not wanting to switch to metric. It's simply a matter of the switch and retooling being more hassle than continuing to use American customary units. Frankly, the difference seems to bother Europeans a lot more than it bothers Americans.

Same observation here. We (Americans) just don’t care. Not like we’re sitting here huffing and puffing about metric. Nobody. Cares. At the end of the day, the one you’re used to is the one that makes more sense. There is no system that is objectively better “in all situations.” Most people that strongly argue that one is better than the other are usually just saying “it’s better cuz I’m used to it”

One argument would be "the best system is the one that everyone agrees on" [1]. Lower risk for big mistakes.

[1] https://everydayastronaut.com/mars-climate-orbiter/

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

#227

Post by Moru »

katbyte wrote: post #190
garbagecoder wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assert it will be incrementally better without offsetting for the externalities of the switch, which would take decades. Also the metric system is European in origin. Despite what chapter 0 of every science book implies god did not invent it.

The imperial system is also European. fwiw Canada did the changeover to metric in the 70 and took about a decade and I’m rather glad we did it.

It's like technical debt. The longer you wait to fix it, the more it will cost you.

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

#228

Post by realusername »

mellavora wrote: post #191
realusername wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not even know anything else than A4 existed, I just learned that now

Oh, come on. Everyone knows about A3 and A5.

Sure, I meant the imperial sizes in inches, never heard about that before. I assumed A4 was the global standard.

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

#229

Post by rebolek »

elzbardico wrote: post #155
garbagecoder wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Imperial units are defined in terms of metric units. * The cost of changing over is astronomical * Domains where the metric system is actually better use the metric system * Domains where it does not don't need it. * You have a supercomputer on your wrist. Dividing by a number other than 10 is not such a challenge anymore. * A4 paper is in no way superior to letter. It's just a choice. Replacing American exceptiona…

I am not an American, I was raised using the metric system for almost everything, but I hate using it for manual work like carpentry and plumbing. For a long time in my country, we used the imperial system for stuff like that, and the change to metric is incredibly annoying and non-intuitive in those domains.

It seems non-intuitive exactly because you are used to imperial: "For a long time in my country, we used the imperial system for stuff like that". If you really were raised using metric not for almost everything, but for everything, it would seem intuitive and you've found the other system strange. And vice versa. That's just, in immortal words of Bjork "human behaviour".

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

#230

Post by rebolek »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #215
jhanschoo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Displays are no longer low-resolution.

Buy a cheap Android phone.
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