D. Hugh Redelmeier via Talk said on Fri, 15 Aug 2025 11:51:25 -0400 (EDT)

Eventually, it was decided that US law (who cares about others) didn't allow copyright protection on fonts but did allow trademark protection on their names. That's why Apple called their Helvetica "Geneva", for example.

Just speaking for myself as a font user, trademarks but no copyright sounds good to me. If I had worked long and hard creating a wonderful font, I'd probably feel very differently, but the trademark but no copyright, in the words of Rick Hunter, "works for me!"

Reading that wikipedia article gives hints about how deeply aesthetic, perceptual, and rendering issues were considered. There is a certain worship of the Old School type designers. Any quick look at Computer Modern font will show that they were onto some things that Knuth was not.

If I were truly interested in deep aesthetics, I'd buy myself a caligrographed book from the early middle ages, before printing presses were invented. But my prioritiy isn't deep aesthetics. To me, it's all about readability. Most of the books I publish use Tex-Gyre-Schola, which is a knockoff of Century Schoolbook. Century Schoolbook was created for quick, glancible readability by eight year olds. And that quick, glancible readability works wonders for quick assimilation and efficient committment to memory of material for adults, even very smart ones, and even ones with less than perfect vision. In my opinion, if it's being printed to paper, Century Schoolbook is by far the best, even if it's meant for a second grader. And there's a special place in hell for these guys who publish in thin, reedy fonts requiring 20/20 vision to assimilate quickly. Century Schoolbook works for viewing book PDFs in a PDF reader. It's a little bolder than one might like, but it works just fine, even for people with lousy vision. When it comes to web pages, I usually don't declare a typeface. Another way of saying this is I don't second guess my visitor: His browser is set for the typeface and size he wants, I deliver text, and his browser renders it in his preferred typeface and size. This philosophy may or may not work with ePubs read by ePub readers. SteveT Steve Litt http://444domains.com

If you have a slightly older bitmap screen, non-serif fonts like this are valuable. A bunch of typesetters I worked for with used a low-kerning sans-serif font for proofing on computer screens. They ensured it had the same spacing as their production serif font. It looked icky. When they did my wedding announcement, I thought they was going to look terrible. Instead, the cards came off the printer looking absolutely /lovely/. However, I now have a fairly high bit density screen on both my laptop and my main home screen. On it, well-kerned serif fonts don't just look good, they give me a reading speed just below that of my e-ink Kobo. And yes, reading speed is the usual metric, just not the only one. Other good ones are * Word recognition speed - as distinct from reading speed, focuses on word-level processing * Error rates - how often readers misread text * Eye strain measurements - fatigue levels during extended reading * Comprehension scores - understanding and retention of content * Scanning efficiency - how quickly readers can locate specific information --dave On 8/17/25 16:14, William Park via Talk wrote:

On 2025-08-17 02:09, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

...

In a previous life one of my main functions was publication design; fonts are important to me.

There are two font families that I usually install on all my systems:

  * For maximum legibility, Lexend <https://www.lexend.com/>.     If the reading speed of your users is more important to you than     fashion statements, this family is worth considering. It's the     result of many years of research.

They need to do more research!  Lexend font breaks my rhythm.  It forces me to read letters, to check the spelling.  With Times New Roman, I read the whole word, multiple words (if short), or phrase in one shot.  If it looks right, then spelling is probably right. Maybe, because I'm so used to Times family...

...

  * For maximal internationalization, Noto <https://fonts.google.com/noto>.     Rather than need separate fonts for Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, etc     Google's Noto has more Unicode language scripts embedded than any     other in a single font.

Plus a few others of note:

  * For a change of pace, Comic Neue <https://theconversation.com/is-     comic-neue-the-new-comic-sans-sans-the-comedy-25697>.     Started as a Kickstarter project <https://www.kickstarter.com/     projects/805738475/comic-neue>, this font corrects the typographical     shortcomings of Comic Sans while keeping its (IMO underrated) casual     character.

  * For a distinctly FOSS character, Ubuntu. <https://github.com/     canonical/Ubuntu-Sans-fonts>     While the Liberation font family was funded by Red Hat, the Ubuntu     font was supported by -- surprise! -- Canonical and has been a part     of the Ubuntu distro since 10.10.

All of the above are available at Google Fonts or the links provided above -- unlike the Liberation family, which ironically is not available that way because of licensing issues(*). (Those wanting freely-available equivalents to Liberation are encouraged to check out the Apache- licensed Croscore fonts <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croscore_fonts> used in ChromeOS.

(*) Liberation fronts are released under the GPL. One interpretation suggests that any document embedding a GPL font is itself subject to the GPL. That posed a possible risk that have inhibited its use, and likely explains why these fonts are not available on Google Fonts. Most open source fonts use either the Apache or the SIL license.

I just found out Tinos and Liberation Serif are identical, at least to my eye.  Flipping back and forth, no change to my document. ------------------------------------ Description: GTALUG Talk Unsubscribe via Talk-unsubscribe@lists.gtalug.org Start a new thread: talk@lists.gtalug.org This message archived at https://lists.gtalug.org/archives/list/talk@lists.gtalug.org/message/2KOH4W7...

-- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest davecb@spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain

Thank you! I couldn't find "Century Schoolbook" anywhere, but did find "TeX Gyre Schola" at Font Download. It has TeX'ish feel to it. On 2025-08-17 19:56, Steve Litt via Talk wrote:

William Park via Talk said on Sun, 17 Aug 2025 16:14:55 -0400

...

They need to do more research! Lexend font breaks my rhythm. It forces me to read letters, to check the spelling. With Times New Roman, I read the whole word, multiple words (if short), or phrase in one shot. If it looks right, then spelling is probably right. Maybe, because I'm so used to Times family...

What's your opinion of Century Schoolbook (or TeX Gyre Schola)?

SteveT

Steve Litt

http://444domains.com

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