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What you can get out of a high-quality font

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Re: What you can get out of a high-quality font

#41

Post by twic »

airstrike wrote: post #4

Tabular numerals are such a valuable feature. It's a bummer they're not more prevalent.

I like tabular numerals. But you really need a small set of other glyphs to be tabular to really make them work. In particular, you need the plus and minus signs to be the same width, so that in a table like:

  gold +1.2%
  oil  -6.4%
  corn +5.2%
everything lines up and looks nice. At the moment, with CSS, there's no way to make that happen, and in normal typefaces the hyphen-minus is too narrow. You can replace the minus signs with a wider dash, but that is semantically wrong and also a pain in the arse.

It occurs to me that contextual alternates could make this Just Work. I haven't used any typefaces expensive enough to do that though!

Re: What you can get out of a high-quality font

#43

Post by iggldiggl »

OlegWock wrote: post #20
CharlesW wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Do you happen to know if that just for API-based usage, or for downloads too? > The Google Fonts API currently does not support requesting the inclusion of optional (also known as discretionary, or opt-in) OpenType Features, such as Stylistic Sets (salt) or Small Caps (smcp, c2sc). Instead the glyphs contained in these features may be published as a separate family… https://googlefonts.github.io/gf-guide/require…

I think that might depend on particular font, but from what I tested, manually downloaded fonts do include OpenType features like smcp or swsh

Sometimes they might also ship outdated versions, e.g. the last released version of Fira Sans is 4.301, but Google still only serves version 4.203. Plus technically Fira Sans has been superseded by Fira Go, which includes additional scripts, but Google doesn't offer that one at all.

Re: What you can get out of a high-quality font

#44

Post by erik_seaberg »

o11c wrote: post #29
airstrike wrote: post #4

Tabular numerals are such a valuable feature. It's a bummer they're not more prevalent.

Any font without tabular numbers is buggy, because it can't support U+2007 FIGURE SPACE  

Also U+2012 FIGURE DASH (for things like phone numbers), and probably U+2212 MINUS SIGN (aligned with plus). Everyone usually defaults to hyphen-minus though, and all bets are off.

Re: What you can get out of a high-quality font

#45

Post by LegionMammal978 »

twic wrote: post #41
airstrike wrote: post #4

Tabular numerals are such a valuable feature. It's a bummer they're not more prevalent.

I like tabular numerals. But you really need a small set of other glyphs to be tabular to really make them work. In particular, you need the plus and minus signs to be the same width, so that in a table like: gold +1.2% oil -6.4% corn +5.2% everything lines up and looks nice. At the moment, with CSS, there's no way to make that happen, and in normal typefaces the hyphen-minus is too narrow. You can replace the minus…

I suppose one way to make it work in CSS would be to split the numbers on the decimal points, and align the parts as necessary. Though there's no way to get around the / soup, unfortunately.

Re: What you can get out of a high-quality font

#46

Post by Suppafly »

twic wrote: post #41
airstrike wrote: post #4

Tabular numerals are such a valuable feature. It's a bummer they're not more prevalent.

I like tabular numerals. But you really need a small set of other glyphs to be tabular to really make them work. In particular, you need the plus and minus signs to be the same width, so that in a table like: gold +1.2% oil -6.4% corn +5.2% everything lines up and looks nice. At the moment, with CSS, there's no way to make that happen, and in normal typefaces the hyphen-minus is too narrow. You can replace the minus…

>you need the plus and minus signs to be the same width

I've never thought about it, but that is somewhat annoying that the math symbols aren't a consistent width with each other.

Re: What you can get out of a high-quality font

#47

Post by idoubtit »

twic wrote: post #41
airstrike wrote: post #4

Tabular numerals are such a valuable feature. It's a bummer they're not more prevalent.

I like tabular numerals. But you really need a small set of other glyphs to be tabular to really make them work. In particular, you need the plus and minus signs to be the same width, so that in a table like: gold +1.2% oil -6.4% corn +5.2% everything lines up and looks nice. At the moment, with CSS, there's no way to make that happen, and in normal typefaces the hyphen-minus is too narrow. You can replace the minus…

> the hyphen-minus is too narrow. You can replace the minus signs with a wider dash, but that is semantically wrong and also a pain in the arse.

In this case, an alternative to "-", U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS, is "−", U+2212 MINUS SIGN. On Linux, I considered mapping the keypad substract key to it, but instead I configured a xcompose alias.

  gold +1.2%
  oil  −6.4%
  corn +5.2%

Re: What you can get out of a high-quality font

#49

Post by inferiorhuman »

Suppafly wrote: post #46
twic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like tabular numerals. But you really need a small set of other glyphs to be tabular to really make them work. In particular, you need the plus and minus signs to be the same width, so that in a table like: gold +1.2% oil -6.4% corn +5.2% everything lines up and looks nice. At the moment, with CSS, there's no way to make that happen, and in normal typefaces the hyphen-minus is too narrow. You can replace the minus…

>you need the plus and minus signs to be the same width I've never thought about it, but that is somewhat annoying that the math symbols aren't a consistent width with each other.

chuckle

Now throw in inline vs block equations into the mix.

Re: What you can get out of a high-quality font

#50

Post by nativeit »

fsckboy wrote: post #38
adrian_b wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tabular numerals are very useful in certain cases, but I find even more useful the old-style numerals. By default, I always use old-style numerals, because they are much easier to read, especially for big numbers, for the same reason why the lowercase letters are easier to read, by having ascenders and descenders that break the uniformity of the characters. I use lining numerals only in the same places where I would…

> I find even more useful the old-style numerals A font of antiquated faſhion doth boaſt moſt excellent and ſubſtantious qualities, yet prithee, what of olde ſtyle figures doſt thou deem hath benefit that I, in mine own diſcretion, might chooſeth?

You must be Welsh!
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