unity-design team mailing list archive

[topdownjimmy <topdownjimmy@xxxxxxxxx>]

As a quick aside: http://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+ugly+fonts
returns over 1 million results.

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Peterson Silva <peterson.235@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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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