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Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

reuters.com

241–250 of 738 posts

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#242
post #236
post #233

> calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a "wasteful" diversity move And changing it back to Times New Roman isn't wasteful?

[flagged]

I'd say changing something for vague aesthetic reasons is far more wasteful than doing so to make things more accessible. Compare the cost of installing a curb cut vs. filling it back in because you think a straight curb looks "stronger."

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#243
post #236
post #233

> calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a "wasteful" diversity move And changing it back to Times New Roman isn't wasteful?

[flagged]

Whether or not serifs actually make text harder to read, at least there is some plausible justification for the original change. Maybe it was stupid at the time, but it's done.

The justification here is petty and wasteful on its face.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#244
There's Clickbait and then this awful headline designed to give people heart attacks.

Who care about fonts? Boring. Why not jazz it up by mentioning coups during an administration that previously tried to pull of a coup attempt. Any administration officials names and coup should not be in the same sentence unless they attempt another one(or unless it's talking about the previous one).

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#245
As far as paper copies of laws and proclamations are concerned, the government can print them out in Wingdings for all I care. 99.999% of people will never see the physical paper. What matters are the digital files which, along with PDF, should be available to view in any font I want, whether Times New Roman or Comis Sans or braille.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#246
post #37

As documented at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_Easter_eggs google search for "times new roman font" and the results are returned in that font. ( https://www.google.com/search?q=Times+New+Roman+Font for the lazy). Looks terrible on my screen.

Nice! Also works with Courier and Comic Sans, but, sadly, not with Helvetica.

Wingdings would have been nice.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#247

Leaders and typefaces: In 1941 Adolf Hitler personally gave order to make the use of the Antiqua mandatory and forbade the use of Fraktur and Schwabacher typefaces. https://ligaturix.de/bormann.htm

Forgive my ignorance but this seems to be one of the most neutral things Hitler did. He just didn't like the font so he ordered it to be changed. Equivalent to your boss ordering tabs be used instead of spaces. After the war was lost the arguments just continued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_disput...

It didn't happen in isolation though. There were a few changes that used aesthetics as a culture influence and what being properly German should mean. Another one which was more explicit was music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_in_Nazi_Germany It was literally anti the idea of diversity and inclusion. Much like this change.

And just like with the font, that shaped preferences for years.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#248
post #52

Butterick on TNR: ( https://practicaltypography.com/times-new-roman-alternatives... ) > When Times New Roman appears in a book, document, or advertisement, it connotes apathy. It says, “I submitted to the font of least resistance.” Times New Roman is not a font choice so much as the absence of a font choice, like the blackness of deep space is not a color. To look at Times New Roman is to gaze into the void. > If you…

People like this makes me want to use Times New Roman more. Maybe not Butterick specifically (the website is fine), but all those people that make a blog and pick a font before even knowing what they even want to write. Most of the time people change the default my web browser has, they make things worse. For a font choice to be any kind of personal expression in my eyes, you first need everything else in place: cont…

When there's an HN link to some philosophy website that intentionally only uses lower-case letters, an obscure font, and yellow on green color scheme, with a page explaining those choices

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons Calibri was selected over Times New Roman was it has a lower rate of OCR transcription errors, making documents using it easier for people using screen readers.

Link on that, as OCR should be more reliable with Times New Roman due to significant serifs.

I don't have link on that, but the main difficulty with OCR isn't the OCR part (not anymore at least), it's the "clean up" part, and serifs are a pain in the ass, especially on sightly crumpled paper. My use case was an ERP plugin that digitalized and read to receipt to autofill reimbursement demands, and since most receipt use sans-serif fonts, it was mostly fine, but some jokers use serifed font (mostly on receipts you get when using cash, not credit card receipts) and the error rate jumped from like 1% to 13% (not sure about the 1%, it might be a story i told myself to make me feel better, it was a decade ago, before i pivoted to network from AI. I always take the best decision it seems)

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#250

Calibri font has "I" and "l" the same, according to Wikipedia. A better font should avoid characters being too similar (such as "I" and "l" and "1"). Another issue is due to the font size and font metrics, how much space it will take up on the page, to be small enough to avoid wasting paper and ink but also not too small to read. So, there are multiple issues in choosing the fonts; however, Times New Roman and Calibr…

A font was the en_US version of fount. A fount was a particular example of a typeface. A typeface is something like TNR or Calibri. They all seem to have been munged into a single set of synonyms except for fount which has been dropped (so why do we still have colour and all that stuff)?

A print, then typewriter, then computer typeface emulates a written script but also takes on a life of its own. Handwriting in english is mostly gibberish these days because hardly anyone uses a pen anymore! However, it is mostly "cursive" and cursive is not the same as serif and sans.

English prides itself on not having diacritics, or accents or whatever that thing where you merge a A and E is called, unless they are borrowed: in which case all bets are off; or there is an r in the month and the moon is in Venus.

So you want a font and it needs to look lovely. If your O and 0 are not differentiated then you have failed. 2:Z?, l:L:1? Good.

I use a german style slash across the number seven when I write the number, even though my number one is nothing like a german one, which looks more like a lambda. I also slash a lone capital Zed. I slash a zero: 0 and dot an O when writing code on paper. Basically, when I write with a pen you are in absolutely no doubt what character I have written, unless the DTs kick in 8)

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