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Re: Better default font
by Luciano on Wednesday 12/Dec/2007, @01:19
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I'm quite fond of the DejaVu font family, actually.
What's "dated" about it? The latest version has been released a couple of days ago... and I find it quite good as a dektop font.
"Fraktur" can be said to be dated, but most sans, not-too-fancy fonts could be used on the desktop with decent results.
What's good with DejaVu is the Unicode coverage -- so it can be a good default font for a large number of languages.
I used to use the condensed version for places where space was an issue, the problem is that it got impossible to select it recently, due to Qt/fontconfig issues, I think. |
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Re: Better default font
by Ascay on Wednesday 12/Dec/2007, @04:29
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> What's "dated" about it?
Just the look.
The letters are very wide. New OS like Leopard (LucidaGrande font), Vista (Segoe font) and some devices like cell phones and media centers are using more narrow letters.
It's just a matter of fashion. And KDE 4.0 is a big improvement in that direction with Oxygen icons and theme, little animations, stylish wallpapers etc.
The default font looks a bit out of place with it's mid-90s charm.
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Re: Better default font
by Luciano on Wednesday 12/Dec/2007, @05:51
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Well, I didn't realize font fashion changed so rapidly.
Actually, I think fonts are chosen quite conservatively -- "Times New Roman" seem to still be a popular font, for example.
Cell phones are a special case, where horizontal space is not to be wasted (they tend to have tall and narrow screens).
Anyway, this is something KDE can't do much about -- I think it asks for a "sans" font, which the distros maps to their preferred font for the role.
And there are not many free fonts that can be used anyway.
The Liberation family does not even have hints (at the moment, anyway), and its Unicode coverage is not comparable with DejaVu.
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Re: Better default font
by Ascay on Wednesday 12/Dec/2007, @06:11
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> Well, I didn't realize font fashion changed so rapidly.
Well, you can't argue much about fashion and style. For most people it's just a matter of acclimatization and not taste.
Nevertheless, two examples to compare:
Kickoff with wide letters:
http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce_4.0-rc2/konqueror.jpg
Lancelot with narrow letters (Ivan Čukić has generally a nice taste concerning GUIs imho btw):
http://ivan.fomentgroup.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/lancelot-2nd-shot.png
In my opinion the font in the Lancelot screenshot looks much more elegant and modern.
> Actually, I think fonts are chosen quite conservatively --
> "Times New Roman" seem to still be a popular font, for example.
You are talking about font usage in general, I'm talking about fonts for GUIs. Who uses Times New Roman in menus e.g.? Nobody I hope. :)
Times New Roman is quite ugly actually. It's only used so much because it is the default font in widespread applications like Word. Or for compatibility because every Windows and OSX installation has it.
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Re: Better default font
by mat69 on Wednesday 12/Dec/2007, @16:40
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Actually I like the Kickoff screenshot more because it's easier to read for me - more space between the characters.
Printed Times New Roman is not that bad, though I prefer the standard LaTeX font.
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Re: Better default font
by Peter V on Monday 17/Dec/2007, @08:35
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Hello, can you please tell how you got kde to look like this:
http://ivan.fomentgroup.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/lancelot-2nd-shot.png
Maybe a small step-by-step how to do that?? It looks very cool and I think more people would like that
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Re: Better default font
by Med on Wednesday 12/Dec/2007, @09:58
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I do not think DejaVu fonts look dated at all. On the contrary they are one of the most modern Free fonts to me. But all this is a matter of taste of course.
To address your point, there is a variant of DejaVu called DejaVu Condensed which is significantly narrower. It should make you happy.
Regards,
Med
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Re: Better default font
by Ascay on Wednesday 12/Dec/2007, @11:21
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> But all this is a matter of taste of course.
More a matter of fashion or trend. Wide fonts like DejaVu (Standard) or Verdana and Tahoma came up in the late 90s. Nowadays they are quite rarely used on modern user interfaces and look therefore a bit dated.
I didn't say that Vera Bitstream or DejaVu look ugly. On the contrary, I prefer them for longer texts like on webpages (Verdana is quite present there). But on a brand new desktop environment like KDE4 they are a bit out of place in 2008.
Just look at OSX Leopard, Vista, cell phones, consoles (Wii, Xbox 360, PS3), DVD menus, audio players... narrow letters everywhere. People get used to such trends, if you ignore it, it will look dated.
The icons and theme from KDE3 (Krystal, Plastik) look very dated today and got replaced to something much more modern. Great! Why not doing the same with the default font?
> To address your point, there is a variant of DejaVu
> called DejaVu Condensed which is significantly
> narrower. It should make you happy.
I suggested that font in my initial post. :)
But it's not about me. I can change the font settings myself. It's more about a modern look that will appear on screenshots in magazines, on websites etc.
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Re: Better default font
by Matt on Wednesday 12/Dec/2007, @13:49
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Narrower fonts only make sense in large hi-resolution devices (e.g., 1080p HDTVs, 20+ inch LCDs, etc.). Just try looking at those "modern" fonts on an old-school 1990's SDTV and tell me that narrow fonts are universally good. You can't read shit when the characters are using lines that are thinner than possibly representable on a 480i display...
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Re: Better default font
by Anon on Monday 17/Dec/2007, @07:31
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Nobody cares about your old SDTV anymore.
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Re: Better default font
by Ben on Wednesday 12/Dec/2007, @14:21
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> The icons and theme from KDE3 (Krystal, Plastik) look very dated today and
> got replaced to something much more modern. Great! Why not doing the same
> with the default font?
Fonts aren't something you can make easily. There goes a lot of work in that and that's the reason why there are very few fonts which are usable for screen display. DejaVu is probably the only real OSS font project with a community and with a font usable for screen, and even we didn't design the main glyphs...
Anyway, for a font, the biggest concern should be legibility, not fashion. And legibility for small font sizes was one of the main concerns when vera was designed.
Sure, if you have perfect eysesight, you may prefer something thinner, but I don't think my grandma would be happy with such defaults, unless you also make the default font size bigger.
Another note: DejaVu Condensed fonts aren't hinted (doing that would take a few months full time work, but if someone has a lot of time, we welcome him), so it's not possible to use those as default now. Furthermore, Qt cannot handle the condensed family, which isn't exactly helpful to make them default either...
Finally, the font settings are made by the distro, not KDE. Although there have been talks about adding dependencies on certain fonts in KDE, it'll still be the the distros who will make the defaults... But you can always make a slick preview distro with the funky fonts of course :-)
Greetings
Ben, DejaVu maintainer
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