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Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

(www.reuters.com)
386 points italophil | 1 comments | 10 Dec 25 00:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.268s | source
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zzo38computer ◴[10 Dec 25 06:40 UTC] No.46214792[source]▶
Calibri font has "I" and "l" the same, according to Wikipedia. A better font should avoid characters being too similar (such as "I" and "l" and "1").

Another issue is due to the font size and font metrics, how much space it will take up on the page, to be small enough to avoid wasting paper and ink but also not too small to read.

So, there are multiple issues in choosing the fonts; however, Times New Roman and Calibri are not the only two possible choices.

Maybe the government should make up their own (hopefully public domain) font, which would be suitable for their purposes (and avoiding needing proprietary fonts), and use that instead.

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1. adrian_b ◴[11 Dec 25 11:56 UTC] No.46230299[source]▶
You are right, but if legibility had been the reason for change, Times New Roman is a rather poor choice, even if better than Calibri.

Among Microsoft typefaces, Georgia would have been much better than Times New Roman, especially when read on displays, but even when printed.

There are of course even better choices, but Georgia is a familiar typeface for most people, it is similar enough to Times New Roman and the older versions of Georgia are free to use by anybody.

Georgia is not as condensed as Times New Roman, but here Times New Roman is the anomaly, as it is more condensed than a normal font, for the purpose of fitting within narrow newspaper columns.

From Windows 3.0 to Windows 98, I have used Times New Roman as my main text font in documents, because Windows did not include anything better, but immediately after the introduction of the superior Georgia I replaced Times New Roman with it for some years, until eventually I stopped relying on the bundled typefaces and I have bought some typefaces that I liked more, for use in all my documents. (Windows 3.0 did not have yet TTF fonts, with which the licensed Times New Roman was introduced later, but it already had a metrically equivalent Times font).