[DejaVu-bugs] [Bug 29877] New: “l” and “I” alternate shapes

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29877

           Summary: “l” and “I” alternate shapes
           Product: DejaVu
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: All
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: medium
         Component: Sans
        AssignedTo: dejavu-bugs at lists.freedesktop.org
        ReportedBy: bogdanb+bugs.freedesktop.org at gmail.com


Hello!

I’ve been using DejaVu Sans as my main sans & UI font (under Ubuntu) for quite
a while. (Although, because of Ubuntu’s packaging, I wasn’t quite aware it was
DejaVu Sans what was displayed as just “sans” in the font chooser.)

I have used it all this time simply because I like it, and I have yet to find
another that can stand for long. (Although the particular font rasterizer and
who knows what other pieces of software might be partly responsible.)

Anyway, there’s one major thing that keeps annoying me: the “l” and “I” are
difficult to distinguish. Actually, this is a common problem, at least for me,
with most sans-serif fonts. I got so annoyed that at one point I started
modifying the fonts installed on my computer to add little serifs on those two
characters. 

I did Arial first, because it’s used on so many web pages. A bit later I tried
the same with DejaVu Sans. I was pleasantly surprised to notice it actually
contained variant glyphs for those two characters. Unfortunately, I’m not aware
of any of the applications I use (other than the FontForge) offering any
support for using those variants, let alone making them the default for every
application. So I had to resort to modifying the font file. It was easier since
the variants were already drawn (I think the hinting was conserved, too). But
it still wasn’t trivial; I had to re-touch all characters where “I” or “l” were
referenced, to adjust spacing or diacritic placement.

The result is quite useful for screen use, but I’m pretty sure it’s not as
pretty as it should be. I didn’t manage to get the kerning right, and the
positioning, of “l” in particular, is quite visibly different.

I was wondering if it were possible to release a separate version of DejaVu
Sans that uses the alternate characters by default. I’m sure the developers
would do a much better job than I did, and much faster. (Actually, I was hoping
it would be almost automatic given the font source, but I don’t know much about
making fonts.)

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