In earlier discussions about cross-platform stand-alones, various people
have suggested that developers stick to common fonts like Arial (on PCs)
and Helvetica (on Macs).
Can I make a plea that you DON'T use those two fonts? Please?
In my day job, I use an accounting package that displays everything in
Arial. It is difficult to read, it cuts off the bottoms of letters (the
descenders, like the tail on a lower case "j"). Worse still, because we
print in a monospaced font like Courier, nothing matches up on screen
with the printed version.
I've spoken to the developers and they basically told me that Arial is a
Windows standard so its WYGIWYG - What You Get Is What You're Given.
Check out the filenames under Windows. Try to edit them by mouse. Notice
how difficult it is to pick up a single character (or even to see it!),
especially if it is an "i" or an "l". Notice how "r"s merge with the
next character - an "rn" can look all the world like an "m".
There's a reason why Macs use different fonts for screen display and for
printing - Helvetica looks lovely printed, but suffers from the same
problems as Arial, so Apple uses a custom font Geneva. The same for
Times (hence Apple's New York).
Lastly, can I point out something which graphic artists and page
designers have known for decades: when reading large blocks of text, the
easiest to read fonts are serif fonts (the ones with little tiny feet on
them) like Times/New York.
So fall back on those ugly defaults if you must, but please please
please spend a few minutes to choose some attractive fonts, and more
importantly READABLE fonts, and use them if available.
--
Steven D'Aprano
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