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