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From: Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] corefonts being depcleaned?
Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 10:13:16 +0200
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Cc: Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>
References: <eLH34-5A4-7@gated-at.bofh.it> <20100519231426.1fcd8704@karnak.local> <21B602BC-F604-49C0-9D5B-0CBFA2D07AA4@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>
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On Thursday 20 May 2010 05:35:40 Stroller wrote:
> On 19 May 2010, at 23:14, David W Noon wrote:
> > On Wed, 19 May 2010 22:30:03 +0200, Dale wrote about Re: [gentoo-user]
> > corefonts being depcleaned?:
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> >> Yea, it has times, ariel and a few others that I use a lot so it has
> >> to stay. I was going to try without it but I use those a lot. Ariel
> >> is really good for me to read with these old glasses.
> >
> > Arial is simply the TrueType clone of Helvetica ...
>
> Helvetica (in red) overlaid with Arial (in blue):
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arial_Helvetica_overlay2.svg
>
> "Though nearly identical to Linotype Helvetica in both proportion and
> weight (see figure), the design of Arial is in fact a variation of
> Monotype Grotesque, ... Subtle changes and variations were made to
> both the letterforms and the spacing between characters, in order to
> make it more readable on screen and at various resolutions."
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial
>
> Stroller.
Quite correct.
Typefaces are not normally interchangeable with no side effects. They have
purposes and intended applications, like most other stuff in life.
Arial was designed to work well as a menubar font so it can display
"File Edit View ..." etc in as little horizontal space as possible. And it
does this very very well.
I use Dejavu for this because I'm a pedantic old license-nitpicking geek but I
can see that Arial is actually a tad better for the job.
Verdana OTOH is designed for web pages. These consist of brief terse
paragraphs that the eye must absorb rapidly with a minimum of clutter around
the glyphs - that's why it is a sans-serif font. It is completely unsuited to
being type-set like a novel.
Try it and see - reformat a regular book in Verdana and try read it. Your eyes
will explode and you'll get headaches in short order. Then do it in Times New
Roman. Ah, bliss. That works better.
corefonts are excellent at their intended purpose. Almost nothing out there
does it better. The Liberation package from RedHat tries to match it and comes
very close, with the additional benefit of being completely free and untainted
by the Big Bad Dominant OS Company
--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com