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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

#711

Post by johannesrexx »

LucasFonts wrote: post #475

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: The decision to abandon Calibri on the grounds of it being a so-called “wasteful diversity font” is both amusing and regrettable. Calibri was specifically designed to enhance readability on modern computer screens and was selected by Microsoft in 2007 to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite…

Your Calibri font is Microsoft proprietary and is not open source. It exists so that MS Office documents won't look right on non-Microsoft systems. It's a dirty aspect of Microsoft's Embrace-Extend-Extinguish stategy meant to further its monopoly. It's disgusting that you cite all of these wonder benefits of Calibri without admitting the true underlying reason it exists.

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

#712

Post by userbinator »

rbanffy wrote: post #693
tbyehl wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what they really want What they really want is to smear something the previous administration did as DEIA, woke, wasteful, and anti-conservative (ie: change). TNR is awful and anyone who actually cares about serifs knows there are better options.

> DEIA, woke, wasteful, and anti-conservative (ie: change). I translate things like "DEI", "woke" and "anti-conservative" as "basic kindness"

[flagged]

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

#713

Post by anigbrowl »

jesterson wrote: post #359
anigbrowl wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to make snide comments about the intelligence of others, be prepared for your own to be scrutinized.

If you reduce intelligence to knowledge of grammar, I can just pity you. Must be good to feel superiour.

Congratulations on missing the entire point.

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

#714

Post by moltopoco »

tbyehl wrote: post #609
BasilofBasiley wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Serif fonts are often perceived as more traditional, but they are also more demanding to use effectively. While a skilled typographer can, in theory, produce excellent results with Times, using it in its default digital form is not considered professional practice. This reads like your CEO is mixing an argument against serifs with an argument against Times specifically. Later on they make a case against Times' lack…

> what they really want What they really want is to smear something the previous administration did as DEIA, woke, wasteful, and anti-conservative (ie: change). TNR is awful and anyone who actually cares about serifs knows there are better options.

From the article:

> ...according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters...

The jab at the DEIA is petty, sure. But if the only intent was to smear them, why didn't they even announce it publicly? It was the choice of Reuters and HN to make an MS Office font change(!) a big deal.

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

#715

Post by moltopoco »

Intermernet wrote: post #488
moltopoco wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > A cable dated December 9 sent to all U.S. diplomatic posts said that typography shapes the professionalism of an official document and Calibri is informal compared to serif typefaces. > "To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface," the cable s…

Authoritative or Authoritarian?

Yes, a true "mask-off moment": I do find that classic LaTeX papers look more trustworthy than whatever MS Word outputs by default.

Associating TNR with authoritarianism would not even be historically accurate, because many authoritarians pushed to simplify writing (Third Reich, Soviets, CCP); if anything, TNR looks _conservative_, which is probably the look that Rubio is going for.

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

#717

Post by seanhunter »

nailer wrote: post #684
seanhunter wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who is not from the US I can say that the global impression of the US is not helped by the secretary of state bikeshedding about fonts. There are important issues of foreign affairs that need thought and attention at this time.

I don't think it really took much time. "Use a better font in all documnts from now on" There you go.

That's not the point at all and I think you know that.

A big part of leadership is conveying priorities. This says "What's important isn't Israel, Venezuela, Russia/Ukraine, China, it's that you used Calibri in compiling a document." It is the very definition of form over substance.

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

#718

Post by simondotau »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #266
simondotau wrote: post #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.

They should be digitally signed PDFs. It's nearly 2026 and trivial to do.

Everything produced by congress should be stored in a git repository hosted in the Capitol.

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

#720

Post by LucasFonts »

ndkap wrote: post #628
nabla9 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we all can agree that Comic Sans MS reflects the current US government best, both spiritually and aesthetically.

As an aside, I didn't know what Comic Sans looks like, so I searched on Google and it rendered the whole page in that font. I tried with other Fonts too like Arial and Times New Roman, and it did the same there. So cool!

If you search for Lucas de Groot (the designer of Calibri) you will get the results displayed in Calibri.
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