Re: [libreoffice-design] New default fonts

On February 19, 2016 5:03:59 PM PST, Tim wrote:

> Personally, I think you cannot have any font that has "everything" for  "everyone's" needs.

Three or four core fonts, and an extension similar to the one that optimizes LibO for Japanese, for 
then 40 or so writing systems that LibO supports. Let the font junkies and  the grammatologists 
install all of those extensions.

> I really thing we need to have a good/free unicode font that has many
> of  the characters/glyphs that are available.

Unifont is libre and covers most of the Unicode 7.0 glyphs.
IMNSHO, its biggest flaw is its weight.
Its lack of slant and type options are also flaws.

> LibreOffice [14+ GB worth of TTF and OTF fonts].  

I see two major issues with that many installed fonts:
* Windows takes forever and a day to start;
* Finding the right font is extremely difficult;

I have no idea how many fonts I have. My laptop claims an impossibly high figure.

> I do wish LO can find a set of the best freely available fonts to
> bundle  with LO's installations, but that is really easy to say and not easy to.

+1

In an ideal world, each L10N / i18n team would create an extension tbat installs the best libre 
fonts, along with other useful tools for the language(s) they target.
EG: Isreal l10n extension would include fonts,  the Nikkud placement extension, along with Hebrew 
dictionary, and grammar checker.

> is being used for, or how long it has been since I last looked as 

For most people, for most purposes, more then three font families is too many.
Within font families, more than 25 fonts is usually excessive.

Translating that into LibO:
* Unifont: font family #1: only one font is offered;
* Gentium: font family # 2: either 3 or 4 fonts are offered;
* Courier: font family #3: only be font is offered: This is a monotype font.

Those 6 fonts work for the majority of use-cases for Latin writing systems.

jonathon
-- 
Multilingual ODF Support

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