What is the best font?

Daniel Arnott said:

Any thoughts on what the best/clearest font is?

This is actually a multi-million dollar question for companies like Adobe and Microsoft.  I haven't brushed up on this for a while, but a while back I read a lot of design textbooks dealing especially with readability on different media (computer screen, TVs, billboards, etc).  Most generally accepted as best fonts for reading on computer screens is Georgia, Verdana and Trebuchet.

Great article here: http://tinyurl.com/6r2drc

also, Bob Pritchitt commented that a much improved Reading Panel is in the works similar to the concept of http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

I changed my default to Cambria. It seems to work better with my eyes, and I haven't run into any issues with it - at least, not yet. 

I tried Global User Interface and I almost like it. I am pretty much using Adobe Caslon Pro 100% default text size and 90% scaling on my 17-inch laptop. Everything looked good on my laptop until Logos tweaked the hinting in the default font (I think that is what the post about ti said had been done). Anyway, after the font tweaking, the default looked fuzzy on my laptop. It looks great on my desktop (20-inch widscreen, default font 100% text size, 100% scaling), though. So, I am thinking my graphics card in my laptop (integrated Intel - yuck!) is the problem.

I think the problem of blurry font in L4 is related to font antialiasing rather than the font itself (possibly the ?font color as well but I'm not sure about it).

Here's a screenshot of the same text in L3 and L4 at 100% font size, and the Mac A14 at a comparable font size.  I don't know what you see but I think the L4 text looks "fluffier" (more white than black), L3 font is somewhere in the middle, and the Mac font appears the thickest and has most contrast (you may have to click into it to see how it's really like).  

Assuming the font colors of L3 and L4 (PC) are the same, then I would think this is a result ?of the way that the font is antialiased, leading to its fluffy look.  Antialiasing makes a font look smoother but takes off a bit of the contrast from the font because of the "fuzzy" edge.  If that it is the case, one solution is to use a "thicker" font.  I'm wondering if the non-antialiased font is not too ugly, then maybe we would benefit from a setting to turn on and off antialiasing?

By the way, I think the Mac fonts are the most readable, and I hope that they are staying this way.  [:)]

You can find a lot on the internet about WPF 4 as it is very close to release, coming out along with the Microsoft development tool Visual Studio 2010. 

The WPF text rendering stack has been completely replaced – a change that brings with it significant improvements to text rendering clarity, configurability, and support for international languages. The new text stack now supports display-optimized character layout, to produce text with comparable sharpness to Win32/GDI text.  Example:

WPF’s new text stack also now supports explicitly selecting aliased, grayscale, or ClearType rendering modes:

The new text stack allows optimizing text hinting and snapping for either animated or static text. Additionally, the new text stack now supports fonts with embedded bitmaps. This allows many East Asian fonts to render with the sharpness to which Win32 users have grown accustomed.

This link seems to be the definitive source on the improvements, with more images. Note it's a software development-oriented blog...

http://blogs.msdn.com/text/archive/2009/08/24/wpf-4-0-text-stack-improvements.aspx

Thank you, Gary!  *smile*

I noticed that your font looked quite nice, as well, and ran a couple of searched on the 'Ebrima' font. Turns out, according to the Wikipedia page, that font's Latin characters are all based on Segoe, one of the default Vista/Win 7 fonts.

In other words, if you choose 'Segoe,' it should look exactly the same as 'Ebrima,' assuming you're using Latin (i.e., English) characters!

Dan DeVilder said:

Would there be any difference?  If not, why both of those?  Or does Ebrima do better with Greek/non-Latin?

On my Win-7 machine there were blocks in the Greek words in several places, so I went back to Calibri. (However, I did like the Ebrima.) So far so good. And if it hadn't been for this discussion, I might still be stuck with Arial. heh....

Odd note (off topic): I saw this thread yesterday dated the 5th in the General section; today (7th) this thread shows up in the Logos_3 section. Since it seems to take 2 days for threads to get out to me via RSS, d'ya suppose that this same thread will show up in Logos_4 section on the 9th? It is indeed wearying to click on an interesting thread title only to find that the user is chatting about Apple's products, or, like this time, read (sometimes again) threads that wander from area to area.

{charley}

[<b>edited by:</b> Dr. Charles A. Wootten at 7:32 PM (GMT -8) on Mon, Jun 7 2010]
AND, after Chuck Colson's recent BREAKPOINT chatting favorably about Steve Jobs, my respect for the company went up measurably.

Ted Hans said:

Milford Charles Murray said:

 

Peace to you, Dan!  *smile*

         Looks like a nice font!        Where did you get it?

...... Mel

Milford Charles Murray said:

Dan DeVilder said:

I've been using "Ebrima", and rather like it.

 

I agree it looks nice. I am asking the same question here, where did you get it?

Ted

 

 

Not only do I not know where he got it, I don't know where I got it.  In fact, I didn't know I had it until now.  I tend to prefer a font with serifs and therefore have been using Bookman Old Style.  The problem with that is that the font isn't complete so that if I set the default notes font to BOS, the Greek doesn't reproduce properly (the old problem of rectangles for those characters which have precombined accents).  Since I frequently quote part of the text in the note title, I can't use BOS for a default note font.  It would be nice if we could specify the font in notes for Latin scripts, Greek, Hebrew and Syriac as in resources.  I should think it wouldn't be too difficult, but what do I know?  As to my prefered font -- I use Bookman Old Style for Latin scripts (It has serifs and is more readable than TNR), KadmosU for Greek, SBL Hebrew for Swahili [;)] and Serto Jerusalem for Syriac.

Dan, thank you for responding to my post.  When I refer to "fuzzy" fonts, I don't see the clarity in the fonts rendered in L4 that I do when I'm surfing the web, . . . (or even writing this post in the Logos forums editor).  In reading this text that I am writing, it does not matter how close to the screen I get, the font is crisp and clear, (like cleartype), however, that does not occur on L4.  Regardless of the font being used in L4, I'm finding that the edges of the fonts are basically not "cleartype". . . . and that's the difference.

Is it a technology that is causing this limitation?  HTML has clear, non-jagged fonts, but not those found in Logos.  Again, I'm not trying to instigate here at all, I'm just trying to understand why this is the case, and if it will improve to the point where we can apply a "cleartype" setting to L4, (as one can in Windows), or is it a rendering engine that needs to be updated?  

Thanks!

George, 

I have taken a screenshot with Snagit from today's homepage, and also from the e-mail response I received from the Logos Community forums in my Gmail account.  Do you really not see the difference?  Does anybody else see the difference?  Both images were taken from the same computer.  Also, the homepage snapshot is utilizing the "Ebrima" font at 110%.  I've tried numerous fonts for L4, and they all display with the same fuzzy overlay as seen on the "Greeting" snapshot.  Even if you think that the font in the e-mail is larger and therefore can't compare . . . how about the font that I am writing with right now?  This font is clear, and the L4 font is fuzzy.

The L4 font issue that I am having is the same in ALL L4 resources, and is not specific to the NET bible resource.  In fact, that "NET" snapshot was taken from the homepage, and all other articles have the same fuzzy look.

What then, are the settings that you are using?   Program scaling, Default Font, Default Text Size?

What fonts does Logos 4 default to.

I like Georgia (shown below).