Typeface/Font thread

[Angst]

This is gross misrepresentation of what transpired.

look, i can simplify the exchange to the latest parts, which was you going source, me giving source, and you going no.

still, it's not a gross misrepresentation. you heralded a culture war destruction of a random biden decision, got corrected, and now you're floundering about, because it's unacceptable that you look bad.

I wondered from where the previous State Department drew its conclusion. And you told me to just google it. This is just being lazy on your part,

you have no reading comprehension issues and are whining about having to read a normal alphabet. you have no standing on discussing laziness.

asking people to google stuff is fine more often than not, but it's kind of a moot point when the first N pages are plastered with dyslexia resources that suggest using a sans serif and lists numerous common, easily available options. some interestingly suggest courier, which could make for an interesting conversation, but i'm well aware having to read that would give you an aneuyrism.

irrespective of me not knowing the answer enough to wanting to discuss it openly. One of your links even points to more-experimental typefaces besides Calibri, with different weights to certain strokes of each letter and such. Which means there are other considerations to reading besides typeface.

i noted sans serif is good and is a general indicator for dyslexic readability. you can go off about kerning and such, which is good for you. the point isn't calibri in itself, i very much never made that point (although i do support calibri solely because numerous dyslexia organizations do; as i do with any other generally legible fonts they suggest). the issue is that somehow sans-serif fonts specifically are ruining your life, and accomodating a subset of the population costing no money that hurts noone ruins the nation. which is a ridiculous position to have.

i am aware of the rest of the qualities of dyslexic-friendly fonts because i read the sources before you did (lol) but before we go into that a bit below, you fail to demonstrate that you actually care about it. because as we saw with the anti-ramp quip, throughout this discussion (and elsewhere), you commonly and proudly declare that you don't want to do accomodations that are cheap, help a bunch of the population, and hurt noone. every time you bring up other attributes of dyslexic-friendly fonts, it's mixed in with musings about how the country is bothering you slightly while not causing difficulty, and that is really, really, really bad to you.

An actual claim which I did not ever dispute.

you literally just went on a rant about your personal problem having to accomodate this stuff in general, mixed in with face-saving notions about kerning or whatever. you ramble about resources to make sure you don't have to be annoyed about what text looks like. you dispute the 'actual claim' because you dispute the premise altogether.

And what would you call a stance which says everyone else who found zero issue with the older typeface will just have to adapt to the new change because...?

to reiterate the principle of utility. 80% of the population has 0 issue reading something which 20% of the population has an issue reading. 100% of the population has 0 issue reading it when typed out differently. it costs practically nothing. i'll do a [*1] mark here, and continue under your response to verbose.

I am not opposed to reasonable accommodations for those who ask for it,

you just did though, multiple times, between the wiggling around in kerning and such. if i am to take this very sympathetic post of yours at face value, that you're just considerate of other factors than sans-serif, how does that translate to the ramp quip and other notes where it's so inconvenient for you making a cheap change that doesn't hurt you and serves 20% of the population? see, that doesn't compute. i'm not taking you at face value. you are currently appealing to other points that aren't congruent with your numerous other positions thrown out here, and pretending it's part of the same belief. it's just parrying.

so the question is, did you learn something here? or do you want to win an argument that you started?

and that offering a reading tool for someone who wants one should be made available. Whether that just means asking the Dept. to convert a specific document to Calibri when sending it, and so on. Rather I'm opposed to assuming that what's presumably good for the disabled ought to be (apparently) par for the course for everyone else too.

i'll link a bit below, but the standard was pretty much set in a way it wouldn't impair anyone. it's not like they used https://opendyslexic.org/ , which is what you're trying to make it sound like here. another reason why the whole thing is so ridiculous.

one of the big issues here is the culture war thing. to shortly return to stuff like size, spacing, etc etc. you're posting like any of it hasn't been considered by anyone. you do that because you consider biden incompetent by default; you are assuming, by default, that their choice was ill-informed, and that they surely could not have considered other aspects of this when making the change. tribe.

biden made the choice to easen readability for eg dyslexic people. rubio reverted it because things need to be Official and Serious, not for any practical reasons. you went "good."

and to preempt the no-u: remember that the rest of us responded as we did because rubio got rid of a font because it was too woke. we don't default to thinking rubio is ridiculous. he makes sure of that himself!

I can tolerate it, for a while; I certainly would not want to read an entire essay in this typeface. I know various teachers of mine did not.

i know the type of teacher. my brother is one such, actually; bookish sort, really smart, done philosophy at university for 25 years and counting. but the teachers in question - they're not actually legibility professors. they just like their texts looking bookish because they engage in bookish work. it's like that because it's supposed to look like that, which is a different question of whether it has been vetted as to legibility. there is a base readability required, of course, but a professor of geology, philosophy, or business knows squat about this.

it's also clear you are trying to make yourself look like a tough-grown student. all of the academia is in you, real work knowing the teachers, etc. but you are whining about having to read a font you don't like. you just sound coddled.

regardless, noone gave a crap at my uni. wouldn't reflect your grade as long as it was readable. we read plenty of textbooks and articles that were done in sans-serif, quite dense ones too, chosen by the professors. so it was either not an issue or you're not as acquainted with higher learning as i thought.

Though I doubt the State Department was contending with message board posts, but probably things much more formal. And so your point here that I shouldn't really have any problem with sans serif because I happen to be typing it now is merely being framed as a distraction. My question isn't which typeface can you personally stand; it's: what's the validity for the change...

since you don't like the sources, and you don't like to do your own work for it, so i understand your confusion in not seeing the validity.

Neither you nor me having to read a different typeface is cruelty. There is no reason to be that dramatic. What, did someone die or something here?

[*1] so for this, in continuation of the above; this is what you miss when people say that the point is cruelty. your position is definitely cruel. doesn't have to include death, you know; that is you trying to wiggle your way out again. it's not what anyone means by politics of cruelty.
what it means is there is a near costless option that benefits 20% of the population while causing no harm to the rest. you think this option is best removed. you have failed to provide a reason, you are too lazy to learn on your own, you ignore sources, and you mix all of this in with a weird quip about how people definitely shouldn't get ramps. there are two readings to this. you treat this whole thing as a power exchange, or you legitimately like that some people need help that they don't get. both are cruel. your "nondramatic" tone doesn't save it, not for reasonable people.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9804255/ comparing times new roman to helvetica, you're not losing any readability
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1071581903001216 times new roman vs arial, you're not losing any readability
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698905003007?via=ihub#aep-section-id36 three experiments, 2 and 3 found no difference irt serif, 1 did! ... but not in an actually significant manner, according to the paper.

lastly, i did notice - you snipped out the points that this is just culture war for you. because it makes you look bad. i get it. but i wonder if you're ever going to engage with the forum in a way that doesn't serve as a vehicle of power. if you want to engage with this in a way that isn't like that, the way to go isn't "i don't believe you"->"source?"->"i don't believe the source"->out of nowhere snipe against the disabled.

-

anyways, i'm done for this exchange.
i'm actually not invested in whether you or everyone else looks bad, i'm interested in whether rubio was being ridiculous, and there seems to be a general thread consensus that that was the case - including people usually at each other's throats - and that your shpiel doesn't quite hold up.

 

[Akka]

What do you care that I care? Did I push back one of your posts or something? I have thousands of more to go to catch up to you before you and I can start measuring what's really considered important...

That's the point, man, how is it "important" in any way ? It's font. No, you did not push back one of my posts (that would hardly be a reason for posting), it's just that this is such a trivial and pointless matter, I can't understand why you would actually bother to invest yourself in such fight.

 

[Akka]

When you add swash caps, Palatino shines.

I'm afraid that one went completely over my head (if it's a joke, if not I just don't get what it means).
Okay, now I know what a swash is in typography. That's nice, but while I like Palatino/Garamond because they are less "dry" than the sans serif fonts, swash is on the contrary a bit too heavy on the flourish. Adequate for a poem or such, but that would be excessive for an actual novel or something. Though it's fine if it's just for italics, as it fits with the "emphasis" part.
Speaking of it :

I have found that if you learned to read using serif typefaces, you might well prefer those in adulthood. The same seems to apply with sans serif. Sans serif have gone far more mainstream since computers started needing printers. Sans serif often look more "modern" even though they have been around since the early 1800s.

Sans serif are fine for the purely utilitarian "clear and easy to ready", but I find them "bland/boring". I wouldn't like them for a "literary" reading (like a novel or something). Fonts fitting the mood of the content is actually a bit of an enhancement to the experience.

 

[aelf]

It depends on the context. Times New Roman is great for manuscripts, for example. Arial less so. I've favoured Barlow and Manrope recently for my website.

Then new MS font seems to be Aptos, which I find decent. I also noticed that fonts can look quite different if you change their size and emphasis. Recently, I tried to look for the font that Arc Raiders uses (not for the title itself), and it doesn't quite look the same when not bold and big enough.

 

[Angst]

oh god the fun preference discussion has been sullied by rubio.

for this thread, i'll keep things light and will continuously just discuss personal preferences and aesthetic applicability.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I'd kind of like to get into fonts. Mostly I use Times New Roman, just based on familiarity.

Once or twice a year, I'm called on to make a poster, and then I think I should have out-of-the-ordinary fonts with some distinct vibe.

I scroll down through all of Word's offerings, and I find some that look good, and use them.

But overall, I feel rather overwhelmed, and as though my choices were purely impressionistic or hit-or-miss. Plus, I don't remember it one year to the next, so I'm just starting from scratch.

Most of the other stuff I have to produce is dry and well-suited for Times, so I don't really have opportunities to try other fonts out on any document.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

It’s why I find Klaus’s complaints confusing because I can still read typefaces designed to help dyslexic people with no issues. To me, it seems Klaus is complaining about a switch to a typeface only appropriate for graphic design or a cursive style.

I wouldn’t make a big stink out of it. If I can read it, I have no issue if it’s an older typeface or a new typeface to help dyslexic individuals. In my eyes, both are legible to read. There’s not really anything to adapt for a non-dyslexic person. The only issue I see is a preference on the type of typeface.

My question [from the other topic] was not what do individual users here prefer; that will typically depend upon the medium. But rather what prompted this change. I understand that the previous State Dept. had a DEI office and that office has to do something to feel useful regardless of anyone in the public (or, none that the NYT reported on, anyway) demanding such a thing. Some might call that "woke". Me I generally think "superfluous" is more the word. But that is not reason enough.
And more to that:

It’s one thing if it’s a novel, it’s another if it’s an official government document/forum. Documents and forums published by the government need to be accessible to all of its citizens. Not just the ones who can read a certain typeface with no issues.

I will continue to agree with this specifically, as I have...I just believe such accessibility should be made available upon request.

Now, was there someone who found the more traditional Times New Roman typeface used by the Dept. impossible or maybe exceedingly difficult to read? That question might be a bit harder to answer than how many people do have dyslexia. Which itself will affect different people in different ways. Because the previous administration's thought process only seemed to have been:
1) Calibri may help those with dyslexia. [Those using smartphones, too.]
2) ????
3) All of our documents will be in Calibri.

What is #2 in this sequence? I can only wager "We want to change things because we can and anyone who doesn't is just some stick in the mud." To me it's just corpo. rebranding of a different sort and it deserves critiquing whether it's really impactful concerning the price of rice or not. That's what I mean when I said 'buildings get only ramps anymore': sure I can probably get by with the change, but, I didn't really ask for it and I still handle stairs just fine.

Though I'm inclined to believe a sizable portion of those with dyslexia can still read Times New Roman just fine. They may not prefer it, no, but it's probably no great inhibitor...

 

[danjuno]

You've been given multiple sources to the contrary, but don't let that get in the way of the culture war conspiracies in your head.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

anyways, i'm done for this exchange.

Just be sure to present a case of some sort in reply rather than telling me to google it to find out, thank you.
I don't mind having arguments; I mind dealing with that kind of snark.

That's the point, man, how is it "important" in any way ? It's font.

One could ask the same question of those who felt Calibri was not only better for the dyslexic but also everyone else. Could they at least read Times New Roman?
Yet the impetus seemed to be on why objections to Sec. Blinken's changes should matter rather than justifying why everyone, disabled or not, will need to adapt to said change. Never mind that Times New Roman was the established typeface for years prior and no one (not in the NYT reporting, at least) seemed to have much of an objection to it then, until Blinken's tenure.

And no, this may not be as important the way Ukraine sovereignty is important. But since the number of topics here doesn't seem to be at a premium, I'm not giving this any more room than I would Ukraine. A talk like this gets discussion moving on things most people probably don't recognize or appreciate until change finally comes along. I can assure you there are other topics here I find vapid and uninteresting without me announcing "Who cares?!"

 

[Angst]

I'd kind of like to get into fonts. Mostly I use Times New Roman, just based on familiarity.

Once or twice a year, I'm called on to make a poster, and then I think I should have out-of-the-ordinary fonts with some distinct vibe.

I scroll down through all of Word's offerings, and I find some that look good, and use them.

But overall, I feel rather overwhelmed, and as though my choices were purely impressionistic or hit-or-miss. Plus, I don't remember it one year to the next, so I'm just starting from scratch.

Most of the other stuff I have to produce is dry and well-suited for Times, so I don't really have opportunities to try other fonts out on any document.

choosing fonts is hard! i don't envy graphic designers in that sense (and remember ~10 years ago where everyone gave up and spammed helvetica?)

for alternatives to times new roman, there are a bunch that are really nice. garamond is a popular one for seeming particularly bookish. but if the purpose of your writing is to look professional quickly & easily with a simple serif, you can't really go wrong with times, as it won't particularly distract in most environments where you want to look office-bookish, and getting too creative can indeed have people question the font instead of the contents.

for my own writing, the world is my oyster, since it's artsy fartsy nonsense anyways. then i can just tailor to whatever individual work i do.

i have been working on my own ttrpg system and there i have largely used linux biolinum to great success. it's very close to an ordinary serif font, so it's not distracting, while it still has sliiight traces of handwritten manuscripts. it's a very nice font for doing readable fantasy if you want to give the text a sliiight hint of being written in the olden days.

 

[Gori the Grey]

This site gives eight font choices. Maybe I'll create a taxonomy of eight different ways I post (Eight Shades of Grey), and assign one posting style to each of those fonts. Eight wouldn't overwhelm me.

Some don't look too different though. To my eyes Georgia just looks a lot like Times and Tahoma like Trebuchet. (Though it's interesting to see variations in size if you don't change font size.)

But maybe that could be cool in its own way, if some of my posting styles are just a smidge different from one another.

I would like a font that looked like hand writing. I looked to see if Word had a biolinum equivalent, but it doesn't look as though it does.

 

[thetrooper]

View attachment 750371

Brother @Lexicus; you’re all good making fun of me but seeing a moderator liking your post is dubious (at best).

 

[Birdjaguar]

Brother @Lexicus; you’re all good making fun of me but seeing a moderator liking your post is dubious (at best).

His post was a clever observation. I like clever posts and often "like" them.

 

[thetrooper]

Well then. We’re certainly not on the same page anymore. I observe the exodus and float if the current is good.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Well then. We’re certainly not on the same page anymore. I observe the exodus and float if the current is good.

What page are we not on the same any more?

 

[amadeus]

Page 1, I think.

 

[danjuno]

I am also confused.