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Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

reuters.com

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

#361
There was an event (or events?) in the past, when some past documents were forged, but with the default (in MS Word, I suppose) Calibre font, which was released years later. I wonder if this has something to do with it.

I love if someone remembers that event better and can provide a link. My memory serves it was about a decade or so ago.

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

#362

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…

Come to think of it, I vs l vs 1 vs | is one advantage of serif fonts.

The crossbars on the capital "i" are not serifs.

But sans-serif fonts are certainly the prime offenders of rendering a lower-case L in place of the capital "i".

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

#363
post #155

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…

> 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"). Only when used in a context where they can be confused. This is a situation where HN is going to give bad advice. Programmers care deeply about that stuff (i.e. "100l" is a long-valued integer literal in C and not the number 1001). Most people tend not to, and there i…

"Only when used in a context where they can be confused."

So what are you supposed to when you're typing along and suddenly you find yourself in such a context? Switch the font of that one occurrence? That document? Your whole publishing effort?

Capital "i"s without crossbars aren't capital "i"s. They're lower-case Ls. Any font that doesn't recognize this should be rejected.

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

#364
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people tend not to Yeah because normal people never have to deal with alphanumeric strings...

No, because normal people can read "l00l" as a number just fine and don't actually care if the underlying encoding is different. AI won't care either. It's just us on-the-spectrum nerds with our archaic deterministic devices and brains trained on them that get wound up about it. Designing a font for normal readers is just fine .

Normal readers know that capital "i" has crossbars on it.

Why design an intentionally ambiguous font? There is only downside to it.

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

#365

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…

In the context of documents, the lack of font choice regarding Times New Roman could be partly attributed to the fact that it was the default font on Microsoft Word until 2007. The irony is, of course, that it was replaced by none other than Calibri.

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

#366
post #340
post #283

I've seen some comments about how Times New Roman was replaced with something else to improve readability by many. There's an irony: the _Times_ (of London) commissioned it in 1932 to improve the readability of its newspaper, which previously used a Didone/Modern style typeface. I like Times New Roman and I find Calibri, a rounded-corner sans serif, to be an absolute abomination of milquetoast typography.

There's no irony in that: different medium. The Dutch dev of Calibri commented on the history [1]. He makes a couple of good points, nuances. The main one I liked is related to your premise: it was that the Times New Roman font was optimized for printing newspapers whereas his successor was meant for computer screens. Ultimately, IMO this is just bullying people with bad eyesight and dyslexia (and said bullying I can…

> He had special glasses with a special lens to read.

Bifocals, I'm guessing.

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

#369

Calibri was supposedly easier to read by people with disabilities. While this itself is debatable, that's not the reasoning behind the font switch. The mere attempt at making life easier for disadvantaged people is labeled DEI and as such cannot be tolerated by this administration.

I don't think that much thought went into it. The change was initiated by the department's DEIA ("A" for Accessibility) office. Anything that office did was a priority for this administration.

Keep in mind that the transgenic mouse breeding program used to make lab mice for research got defined because the President claimed Democrats were so woke they were funding "trans" mice research.

Half of what they are doing is virtue signalling and posturing without any real understanding of what they are doing.

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