I am currently debating which (proportional or tabular) style numbers to keep it as default unicode and make the latter as an option.
Any recommendation? I noticed some of popular fonts with both has tabular style glyphs as default. Although I feel proportional numbers are more used in general.
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Verdana’s are tabular and lining.
As Stephen notes, the default style depends on the typeface in question, and even the style.
IMO, a display face should have proportional lining figures.
Personally, I wish we had a font technology in which there was no such thing as a default numeral style, and instead recognised that numeral style and spacing is always conditional.
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On a related point, I designed a newspaper typeface where the default was proportional, for body text, and also provided an alternate font with default tabular figures (not even an OpenType feature), for the stock price tables; however, they used the default font default figures (proportional) there—either because they didn’t “get” it, or had some weird technical constraint, or because they thought proportional figures looked classier, or some such thing. Go figure.
Maybe it could be a software rule, similar to how smart quote substitutions are handled by software. If numerals* on a line aren't preceded by alphabetics and follow a line of other numerals which also aren't preceded by alphabetics, make the numerals in both lines tabular. Unless those alphabetics are identical on both lines. Otherwise, make them proportional.
And then treat tabs as if they were new lines. That way you could do something like Phone[tab]555-2368[break]Mobile[tab]555-0113
* Including mathematical symbols, currency and such.
Similarly, given that tabular settings are a very small amount of the total of typesetting, surely it makes sense to have proportional figures as the default. Isn’t that the logic behind Georgia’s figures (Microsoft edition)?
You might just as well require users decide between lower case and small caps.