unity-design team mailing list archive

[topdownjimmy <topdownjimmy@xxxxxxxxx>]

[Apologies if this is a duplicate message; I sent this first with an
email address other than the one in my Launchpad profile.]

I'm not positive that desktop typography falls within the scope of
Ayatana, but this list is my best guess.

Currently in /etc/fonts/conf.d/30-metric-aliases.conf (and for as long
as I can remember in Ubuntu), Liberation Sans is specified as an
acceptable alternative for Arial, and Liberation Serif as an
acceptable alternative for Times New Roman. The historical reason for
this is that the Liberation set of typefaces was specifically designed
to be metric-compatible with its corresponding Microsoft fonts (Arial,
Times New Roman, and Courier New).
(http://press.redhat.com/2007/05/09/liberation-fonts/)

However, it's my opinion that having this metric-compatibility is not
as important as having similar letterforms. Especially if we are
paying special attention to aesthetics in 12.04
(http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/810), I think these font
substitutions are something we should reconsider. It seems as though
these font configuration files haven't been updated in a while, as
they include some fonts that aren't even included in Ubuntu anymore
(e.g., Thorndale AMT, Albany AMT). FreeSans and FreeSerif, as opposed
to the Liberation set, are almost indistinguishable from Arial and
Times.

A major reason that I think this change would be important is the web;
so many sites are now calling for Arial/Helvetica that in Ubuntu are
rendered in Liberation Sans, and to someone coming from Windows or Mac
OS, this can look very alien. Sites like Google/Gmail just don't look
*right*, and this lends itself to the common belief that "Linux has
bad fonts." This becomes even more important as so much of what people
do on a computer now is within the browser.

Another shortcoming of the current font config files, as regards the
web, is that there are no substitutes defined for many common fonts
called for in stylesheets -- Lucida Grande/Sans, Georgia (!!),
Verdana, Tahoma, etc. Facebook, in particular, has a font stack that
calls for Lucida first, Tahoma second, and Verdana third. A new Ubuntu
user who goes to Facebook for the first time will see *none* of these
alternatives. (Although, in truth, they will most likely see DejaVu
Sans, which is a "close enough" approximation of Verdana, as far as
free fonts go. Still, it will be jarring not to see some variant of
Lucida.)

In fact, there are many substitutions that could be taking place, but
currently are not. There are many free font packages that could supply
much greater versatility for fonts on the web:

* Georgia -  Bitstream Charter
* Verdana - DejaVu Sans
* Lucida - Luxi Sans [xfonts-scalable]
* Gill Sans - Gillius [ttf-adf-gillius]
* Baskerville - Baskervald [ttf-adf-baskervald]
* Franklin Gothic - UnDotum [ttf-unfonts-core]
* Futura / Century Gothic - URW Gothic Uralic [ttf-uralic], Beteckna
[ttf-beteckna], or Universalis [ttf-adf-universalis]
* Palatino - URW Palladio L Roman
* Goudy Bookletter - Goudy Bookletter [ttf-goudybookletter]

Granted, adding these font packages to the default install would
increase the size of the install disc, and I haven't done the math,
but some of them are already included, and a couple of the others
aren't very large at all. Also, there might be licensing issues that
make some of these packages not technically "free," but I haven't
researched that.

Things *do* look more "authentic" with the msttcorefonts package
installed, but that is, of course, not free, and thus shouldn't be
included on the install disc.

Finally, the default serif and sans-serif fonts in Firefox are set to
DejaVu Sans and DejaVu Serif; this is also strange, since in Windows
they are Arial and Times New Roman, which bear little similarity to
the DejaVu family. As I stated before, I think FreeSans and FreeSerif
are more similar to Arial and Times, but if metric-compatibility is
really that much of a concern, the defaults should at least be
Liberation.

In any case I do think *something* can be done to improve the
typographical experience on the web in Ubuntu. Thoughts?

-Jay