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Felix Miata | 11 Mar 2008 00:43
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condensed, again

Is there some sort of mission statement that defines why particular family
names and characteristics are as they are?

1-It seems Sans is designed to substitute for the very large x-height
Verdana, while Serif is much larger for any given size than any other common
web font, such as Georgia. Shouldn't Serif be smaller in apparent size than
Vera Serif was, a little closer in apparent size to Georgia so that it could
be a more natural substitute?

2-Condensed seems very little narrower at many sizes than Book. e.g., Sans
Condensed is in many px sizes significantly larger than Liberation Sans,
scalable Helvetica, and Arial. Condensed size is listed as 87. Why is that?
Wouldn't a meaningfully narrower 75 make more sense, more like Nimbus Sans L
and other narrow and/or condensed fonts are? IOW, a 13% reduction from
standard doesn't seem very condensed. Should condensed be narrowed to 75, or
maybe an extra condensed added at 75?

testcase of several narrow/condensed fonts for comparison in web browsers:
http://mrm.no-ip.com/auth/Font/fonts-comps-75s.html
--

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Let us love by what we do." 1 John 3:18 NLV

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Ben Laenen | 11 Mar 2008 12:54
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Re: condensed, again

On Tuesday 11 March 2008, Felix Miata wrote:
> Is there some sort of mission statement that defines why particular
> family names and characteristics are as they are?
>
> 1-It seems Sans is designed to substitute for the very large x-height
> Verdana, while Serif is much larger for any given size than any other
> common web font, such as Georgia. Shouldn't Serif be smaller in
> apparent size than Vera Serif was, a little closer in apparent size
> to Georgia so that it could be a more natural substitute?

I don't think Vera was designed to be a substitute for anything. It was 
designed as a good screen font, readable at small sizes (okay, so was 
Georgia) and Serif is just the serif counterpart of Sans, and its 
metrics are quite similar to it.

But we took never part in the design process of Vera, so I guess it's 
better to ask the designer instead of us. We're just the Vera 
forkers :-)

> 2-Condensed seems very little narrower at many sizes than Book. e.g.,
> Sans Condensed is in many px sizes significantly larger than
> Liberation Sans, scalable Helvetica, and Arial. Condensed size is
> listed as 87. Why is that? Wouldn't a meaningfully narrower 75 make
> more sense, more like Nimbus Sans L and other narrow and/or condensed
> fonts are? IOW, a 13% reduction from standard doesn't seem very
> condensed. Should condensed be narrowed to 75, or maybe an extra
> condensed added at 75?

We create our condensed fonts automagically, and that means it's not 
really up to par with doing this work manually (which would basically
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Felix Miata | 11 Mar 2008 19:31
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Re: condensed, again

Just in case no one has looked, condensed really looks bad with Cleartype. On
WinXP and 1600x1200 on 18" Dell Trinitron CRT I have standard font smoothing
for the desktop, but Cleartype for IE7. The largest sizes on
http://mrm.no-ip.com/auth/Font/fonts-comps-narr-plus.html in IE look pretty
bad compared to regular 100 width, much worse than both in Opera and Gecko
using whatever standard doz font smoothing is.
--

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Let us love by what we do." 1 John 3:18 NLV

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Felix Miata  ***  http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/

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Denis Jacquerye | 12 Mar 2008 16:46
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Re: condensed, again

Hi Felix,

Condensed are very experimental, and has only been created after some
people requested them. We don't provide the proper amount of work for
it to be useable at the same level as the regular width fonts. For
example, Condensed is not hinted, so it will look bad compared to
hinted fonts.

On 11/03/2008, Felix Miata <mrmazda@...> wrote:
> Just in case no one has looked, condensed really looks bad with Cleartype. On
>  WinXP and 1600x1200 on 18" Dell Trinitron CRT I have standard font smoothing
>  for the desktop, but Cleartype for IE7. The largest sizes on
>  http://mrm.no-ip.com/auth/Font/fonts-comps-narr-plus.html in IE look pretty
>  bad compared to regular 100 width, much worse than both in Opera and Gecko
>  using whatever standard doz font smoothing is.
>
> --
>  "Let us not love with words or in talk only.
>  Let us love by what we do." 1 John 3:18 NLV
>
>   Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
>
>  Felix Miata  ***  http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/
>
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Nicolas Mailhot | 12 Mar 2008 19:13
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Re: condensed, again

Le mercredi 12 mars 2008 à 16:46 +0100, Denis Jacquerye a écrit :
> Hi Felix,
> 
> Condensed are very experimental, and has only been created after some
> people requested them. We don't provide the proper amount of work for
> it to be useable at the same level as the regular width fonts. For
> example, Condensed is not hinted, so it will look bad compared to
> hinted fonts.

… in environments where the manual hints are actually used (under Linux
an autohinting engine is often activated instead of the patented manual
hint interpreter, so the lack of manual hinting is not a problem)

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Felix Miata | 12 Mar 2008 20:10
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Re: condensed, again

On 2008/03/12 19:13 (GMT+0100) Nicolas Mailhot apparently typed:

> Le mercredi 12 mars 2008 à 16:46 +0100, Denis Jacquerye a écrit :

>> Condensed are very experimental, and has only been created after some
>> people requested them. We don't provide the proper amount of work for
>> it to be useable at the same level as the regular width fonts. For
>> example, Condensed is not hinted, so it will look bad compared to
>> hinted fonts.

> … in environments where the manual hints are actually used (under Linux
> an autohinting engine is often activated instead of the patented manual
> hint interpreter, so the lack of manual hinting is not a problem)

Well, I did mention Cleartype on doz. It works fine for me on Mac, OS/2 & all
the various Linux distros I use. Maybe in the "experimental" description it
might be good to add a discouragement to install the separate condensed files
on systems with Cleartype enabled.
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Let us love by what we do." 1 John 3:18 NLV

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata  ***  http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/

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