unity-design team mailing list archive

[Peterson Silva <peterson.235@xxxxxxxxx>]

Is this "ubuntu has bad fonts" really "a thing"? I mean, the Joe user can't
barely tell Times New Roman from Arial oO

I just found this curious, but I agree with everything, and we should focus
on polishing fonts and everything --- it's an aspect that makes the system
look slick and all. I just found it funny because I've never read a lot of
complaints about the fonts in Ubuntu being bad...

*Peterson*
*http://petercast.net*



On 20 October 2011 15:34, topdownjimmy <topdownjimmy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> [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
>
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