New forum typeface

Dyana Weissman

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. 

Ray Larabie

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

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. 

Daniel Benjamin Miller

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.

Paul Miller

I like the new typeface. 

Georg Seifert

There are two lines with the wrong font.

Mark Simonson

@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.

Dyana Weissman

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. 

Adam Jagosz

"Quote" is smaller, and "Leave a Comment" is still Helvetica.

Adam Jagosz

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.

Dyana Weissman

Thanks. Fixed.

Thomas Phinney

Source Sans is fine. And Noto is also fine.   

Christian Thalmann

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.

Adam Jagosz

@Christian Thalmann Regarding Noto Sans, the β a tad too wide and Ф without overshoots?

Christian Thalmann

Adam Jagosz said:

@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

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.

Adam Jagosz

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).

Vasil Stanev

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?

Paul Miller

Vasil Stanev said:

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

Dyana Weissman

I can do my best to make it bigger, but the way the theme was written some elements connect to others randomly (for example, the Quote button is not the same as the rest of the reactions). Getting it to this point meant a few compromises. 

Also, I agree with others that Source's Bold isn't quite as readable. Right now I'm more inclined to try Noto Sans. As it's been noted, it sits larger on the body and has a bigger character set. For everyone who wants a larger size, that might be a better solution. Even though some people have issues with some of the characters, I think we need to keep in mind that nothing is going to be perfect, and certainly not for free. 

I'll try updating to Noto when I can find the time. Either later today or sometime this week. Any concerns about that, let us all know. 

Dyana Weissman

Updated to Noto Sans. Let us know if there are any issues. 

Vasil Stanev

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I like the new font, good job, Dyana!

Christian Thalmann

π
There‘s supposed to be a pi on the line above... still doesn’t show up! 😖

Mark Simonson

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

Noto Sans looks better to me.

Adam Jagosz

I'm seeing it too, Firefox on Windows 10; try emptying cache.

Adam Jagosz

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).

Christian Thalmann

Christian Thalmann said:

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

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

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).

Daniel Benjamin Miller

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?

Thomas Phinney

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.