New forum typeface

Dyana Weissman
Dyana Weissman Posts: 331
edited February 2020 in TypeDrawers Announcements
Hello all,

Recently, it was noted that the previous typeface, Alright Sans, does not have a character set that covers all the characters that we talk about. So for the time being, we've switched to Source Sans Pro. We're open to other suggestions and preferred fallback fonts. Someone also suggested preferred fonts for global scripts by Unicode range. If anyone has any more thoughts on that topic, we'd love to hear it. 
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Comments

  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,432
    edited January 2020
    I like it but it seems like the bold is coming in as something else. Check this thread. Viewing in Windows Edge Chromium.

    Testing testing




  • Dyana Weissman
    Dyana Weissman Posts: 331
    edited January 2020
    Thanks. I'm looking into it.

    Edit: That should be fixed. I'm not loving the small type elsewhere and not sure why the header isn't updating but those are on my list. 
  • May I suggest the Noto Fonts (https://www.google.com/get/noto/)? They're free and open-source as well, and have very good character support. I personally like Noto Sans a little better than Source Sans Pro (though this is just my personal taste), but even if you don't plan on using the fonts for all character sets there are pretty good fallbacks available even for some quite obscure scripts.

  • I like the new typeface.  :)

  • There are two lines with the wrong font.
  • @Ray Larabie said: "I like it but it seems like the bold is coming in as something else."

    Ray, in your screen grab, the bold is Source Sans (the correct font), but the plain is Lucida.
  • Ok. The Helvetica should be gone now and with the help of @Johannes Neumeier I've bumped up some of the sizes so they're not too hard to read. If anyone notices anything else or thinks something is illegible, post it here.

    And it seems like most people are OK with Source Sans Pro, but if there's further interest in Noto, let your opinions be known. 


  • "Quote" is smaller, and "Leave a Comment" is still Helvetica.
  • Adam Jagosz
    Adam Jagosz Posts: 689
    edited January 2020
    Source Sans is fine, but I don't like its bold. It's a bit cramped and performs so-so at small sizes at low resolutions.
    Edit: I had a peek at Noto Sans now and I think it works better. At 15px it appears larger than Source Sans Pro, so it could be used at 14px for user names. Overall I like Noto Sans better because it is more robust in shape and the bold has bigger apertures and more generous counters.
  • Thanks. Fixed.
  • Source Sans is fine. And Noto is also fine.  :p 

  • I did notice Source Sans looking a bit denser than the previous forum typeface, especially in the bold. Looking at Noto Sans on GF, it strikes me as a somewhat cruder design, with a few questionable glyphs in Greek and Cyrillic. I suppose that won't be noticeable during regular forum use, though.
  • @Christian Thalmann Regarding Noto Sans, the β a tad too wide and Ф without overshoots?
  • @Christian Thalmann Regarding Noto Sans, the β a tad too wide and Ф without overshoots?
    For starters, yes. The /γ/ also looks way too /y/-shaped for my taste. I'm also not too fond of the straight-sided bowls and half-bowls in /Φ/ and /Ψ/, which disagree with the continuous ellipsoids of /O/ and /Ω/ etc. In the Cyrillic, the left side of /Д/ looks uncomfortable to me (almost a three-way intersection), the /З/в/ь/ feel artificially wide, and again, some glyphs look like they belong in Eurostile (e.g. /Ђ/Ћ/Ч/). The /δ/ is unbalanced and the tapered instrokes of /π/τ/ feel out of character.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,131
    Ah, so this isn't change for the sake of change: the typeface is being changed so that the character set will be more useful. In that case, I heartily approve.
  • Good remarks, I wouldn't have noticed just by looking at text size; though Noto Sans is not really meant for display.
    I can see how the notch in pi and tau might have been aimed at helping separate them a little bit from sigma.
    I suspect most of these quirks are legibility accommodations, even if could have been executed more gracefully (especially ЂЋЧ).
  • I am getting used to it, but would like it to be bigger. Is this something I should do on my browser or can I customize the board to do it for me?

    You could CTRL + Mouse Wheel
  • Updated to Noto Sans. Let us know if there are any issues. 
  • Vasil Stanev
    Vasil Stanev Posts: 775
    edited February 2020
    !"$¥¢§£Ą¶DŽLJǕǤǣǼǾȨḀḄḗḮḯḱṒ
    I like the new font, good job, Dyana!
  • Christian Thalmann
    Christian Thalmann Posts: 1,988
    edited February 2020
    π
    There‘s supposed to be a pi on the line above... still doesn’t show up! 😖

  • I'm seeing it. (Safari 13.0.5 on macOS 10.15.3.)

    Noto Sans looks better to me.
  • I'm seeing it too, Firefox on Windows 10; try emptying cache.
  • Adam Jagosz
    Adam Jagosz Posts: 689
    edited February 2020
    There's no mark positioning. I'd prefer self-hosting the font instead of relying on Google, because the GF's subset doesn't include the combining marks. (Which is stupid of Google, as some languages rely on combining marks).
  • π
    There‘s supposed to be a pi on the line above... still doesn’t show up! 😖
    Aha, I do see it on my Mac, but not on the iPhone.
    (BTW, does anyone know why the iPhone automatically inserts the wrong apostrophe?)

  • Daniel Benjamin Miller
    edited February 2020
    Something I have noticed: now, Noto Sans is shown in the composition box as well, and not just the browser-settings-level default body font (which, for most people, is a variation of Times).
    Now, let's test a more obscure alphabet, covered by Noto. I am writing my name using the Phoenician script: 𐤃𐤍𐤉𐤀𐤋 𐤁𐤍𐤉𐤌𐤉𐤍 (the keener among here may recognize this!).
    Edit: It does not seem to display using Noto Sans. Maybe there could be a way to load the proper fonts when necessary only (since Noto splits up into many families based on which scripts are included). Not entirely sure how/if this could be done, though.
  • Kent Lew
    Kent Lew Posts: 944
    I’m seeing the Phoenician just fine. And my Firefox inspector indicates that it’s being displayed in Noto Sans Phoenician.

    (And the composition box is displaying right now for me in Lucida Grande, fwiw. Which is what it always has for me).
  • Kent Lew said:
    I’m seeing the Phoenician just fine. And my Firefox inspector indicates that it’s being displayed in Noto Sans Phoenician.

    (And the composition box is displaying right now for me in Lucida Grande, fwiw. Which is what it always has for me).
    Hmm. Do you have the font installed on your computer? And does it load in as a network asset when you clear caches?
  • I don’t see the Phoenician. It is just "Noto Sans" for me. (Chrome, Mac)

    The Noto language support is not all in one font. It can’t be, due to limits of font format and encoding. I don't think the base mega-font supports Phoenician within its 64K limit.