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revise font?

by ww (Archbishop)
on Jun 30, 2005 at 18:55 UTC ( [id://471425]=monkdiscuss: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

While using personal css would be one way to deal with the legibility of some elements of the Monastery, TWWTM (They Who Work The Magic © 2005) may find this a suggestion worthy of implementing in the (presumed) site css.

Background: In response to a SOPW ( Capitalize First Letter of Each Word ), a monk posted:

      s/(?<=\w)(.)/\l$1/g for @a;

prompting this:

Re^2: Regular Expression by suaveant

Heh... these fonts are bad. When I first read this I saw slash-one dollar-one, and was trying to figure out what the heck you were smoking. Then realized \l was slash-ell... characters aren't exaclty the same but that are really close to it. :)

          - Ant

Humbly, oh devs, gods, and fellow monks: I endorse the implicit recommendation in suaveant's observation: It would indeed be nice to cause PM to default to a typeface that facilitates distinguishing an ell from a one; a curly brace from a paren, and so on. Even a stylesheet that merely specs 'sans-serif' might help (though it raises other potential sources of confusion). A slightly more ambitious changes might spec a common console font, per the $ENV info provided by the visitor's browser.
(update, 1 July) ... or using one of the other mechanisms below. or, of course, not, if the notion that this is 'big brother-ish prevails... (</update>

ww

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: revise font?
by ysth (Canon) on Jun 30, 2005 at 19:02 UTC
    I disagree strongly. It's up to the user to configure their browser with an appropriate monospace font. The site has no business second guessing the browser configuration.

      But providing sensible defaults for certain uses isn't that bad a plan is it?

      I think a big part of the problem with better default style is Anonymous Monk and the need to allow him to access the site in a minimalistic format. As long as user settings are one to one with users we have this problem. If we could make the relationship 1:N then wed be better placed to make the default look a little nicer.

      ---
      $world=~s/war/peace/g

        That would involve moving stuff like numwriteups, lastviewednewestnodes, and the wiki and inbox read flags into proper database fields where they belong :) Is locking stuffed in there too? Sounds like a lot of work for not all that much gain.
        The defaults *are* sensible, at least for all the browsers on all the platforms that I use. It is likely that by making it more easily readable by you it would be made less easily readable to me. Therefore the correct solution really is for people to apply their own stylesheets if they feel the need.
Re: revise font?
by halley (Prior) on Jun 30, 2005 at 19:02 UTC
    According to CSS, there is a code family for Monospace. Note that there is no distinction between serif and sans-serif fonts within the Monospace family. This is true of various graphical operating systems, as well.

    Besides, fonts are more appropriately a user concern, just as background color. There is a point at which you should not try to micro-manage the user's experience, because the users will not agree that your choices constitute the most usable experience.

    --
    [ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

      quoting (with an aside elipsed out) from w3c:
      The sole criterion of a monospace font is that all glyphs have the same fixed width.... The effect is similar to a manual typewriter, and is often used to set samples of computer code.

      I don't know that that fully backs the apparent intent of your observation re "no distinction between serif and sans-serif...." In fact, I found nothing that tells me that a monospace sans-serif is impossible/non-existant (but on the other hand I conceed, I have not found a monospace sans-serif yet, let alone one which is cross-platform, commonly available, and free.).

      As for "more appropriately a user concern" I offer another view: that fonts are a design element and that good design makes the rendered matter easy for the visitor to read. (Update My reading suggests a general agreement today that sans-serif is -- on screen -- more readable, more readily comprehended, than serif, while the reverse may be true when presented on dead trees. </update>) Further, it's a non-intrusive design element, since the knowledgeable user can easily use a local stylesheet to override any element which obstructs comprehension.

      For (perhaps excess) clarity: It seems to me that there is NO contradiction or inconsistency between my observation re the user's ability to spec a different face and my notion that the designer has an duty to make comprehension easy.

        The point is, you cannot specify both font-family: monospace and font-family: sans-serif; they are mutually exclusive options thanks to the way the CSS specification has been written.

        As for whether or not it's a design issue, I would say the flaw of the design is in the font itself, not in whether or not it has serifs. To wit, my monospace fonts make it clear that 1 is one but l is ell. This may vary from system to system, as the fonts included on a user's computer are not something over which a website has much control.

        --
        [ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

        Before you think I've gone off completely, my background, before coding, was web design, and before that, I did commercial graphics, so I've had a bit of a background in typography.

        but on the other hand I conceed, I have not found a monospace sans-serif yet, let alone one which is cross-platform, commonly available, and free.

        There are monospaced sans-serif fonts. In fact, many monospaced fonts that have been around since before true-type days would not show serifs at smaller point sizes. But there are san-serif fixed width fonts --monaco being the one that first comes to mind, although it does have serifs on i, j, l, I, J and 1, but I believe that has more to do with the fact that I1l all look the same in a true san-serif.

        I offer another view: that fonts are a design element and that good design makes the rendered matter easy for the visitor to read.

        A good design does make things eaiser to read, but not everyone reads things the same way -- some fonts may be easier for one person to read than other. Font selection does more than just determine the legibility of a passage -- it also sets the tone. The same passage may take on different inflections if written in a blackletter, old style, transitional, modern, gothic, wood type, art nouveau, etc, etc. (I didn't even get to any of the 'fancy' type fonts)

        My reading suggests a general agreement today that sans-serif is -- on screen -- more readable, more readily comprehended, than serif, while the reverse may be true when presented on dead trees.

        Care to provide your sources? Unless things have changed dramatically in the last 10 years, when I dealt with this professionally, the issue didn't have to do with the medium -- it had to do with the length of the line being read -- longer lines can be read faster, with fewer errors, than san-serifed fonts, although people think san-serif fonts are prettier 1. The other thing to consider is that many fonts were specifically designed for screen reading, and so including a screen representation of a font designed for printing in a screen legibility test will skew the results 2

        Most of the san-serif vs. serif arguments tend to be people arguing on discussion sites, rather than scientific research, from what I've seen. Font selection is a very, very personal thing to most graphic designers, which results in dumbasses only making information available as PDF, or using images for blocks of test. Even when there are tests, they tend to focus on point size as a measurement, rather than a font's aspect ratio.

        I'm personally of the opinion that the content is more important than the presentation is most situations, and that the designer should make suggestions, but should understand that it's completely normal for someone to override their decisions, and that users should know how to override settings, should they ever come across design that they don't like.

Re: revise font?
by revdiablo (Prior) on Jun 30, 2005 at 19:27 UTC

    I agree with the previous posts. I don't think the specific fonts used are Perlmonks' concern. They are the concern of the user of a particular browser on a particular system. Furthermore, even if the folks who decide these things decided to choose a font, which font would they use? How would they know all the Monastery's users have that font? How would they know user A's FooBar font and user B's FooBar font are the same? There's no way to do this reliably, because of the very nature of the Web.

    What I would like to see, though, is a removal of the <font size="-1"> wrapped around <code> tags. I think that's stepping on the user's concerns just as much as your suggestion is.

      I'd agree with the removal of size='-1'. That's basically telling the browser that you'd like the font to be one size smaller than what the user prefers.

      Most browsers (at least, those that display in a GUI) specifically have an option for defining two default fonts -- that of 'normal' text, and that of 'fixed-width' text (which gets shown for <tt><pre> and the like.)

      I'd suggest that anyone who views code in a web browser set their fixed width font to whatever they use in their text editor for coding, or command line terminal, or however else they're used to interacting with code.

      I personally prefer ProFont (although, I like the classic, to the updated version. There's also Sheldon (available from the ProFont page), Anonymous, and I'm guessing plenty of other fonts with a similar purpose.

      Go into your User Settings and look in the code listing section, and check the "Large Code Font" box. Then the font size will be restored to "normal".

      Hope that helps.

        I have a custom style sheet that fixes that, among other things. I just think the size="-1" should be taken out of the default styling. It was mostly an idle thought though; I wouldn't have even mentioned it except in context.

      I suspect the <font-size="-1"> represents an attempt to minimize the number of continuation lines. If so, it may have been -- in the days of 800x600 displays -- a reasonable design choice. However, it would be more amenable to user-override if rewritten with css.

      And generally, to those who feel that control of the rendering is a "user right upon which PM should not intrude," so to speak, I see no way that specing a more readable font in any way restricts that right. The intent and, ISTM, the effect would be to assist those whose knowledge does NOT include "how to create a local style."

Re: revise font?
by etcshadow (Priest) on Jul 01, 2005 at 05:52 UTC
    Maybe it's just me, but (with the exception of ludicrously under-sized fonts which are ALL hard to read) I find the difference between 1, l, I and | much easier to distinguish with serifs involved (paper or computer) than without.
    ------------ :Wq Not an editor command: Wq
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