[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 113538] Bundle and use open source Hebrew fonts by default

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=113538

--- Comment #26 from Eyal Rozenberg <eyalroz at technion.ac.il> ---
(In reply to Yousuf Philips (jay) from comment #21)
> (In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #19)
> > You're "begging the question" (petitio principii) - assuming that's it may
> > be different in Hebrew than it is in Latin. Why?
> 
> Didnt follow.

So, a decision is being made about Latin. Why? That is, why isn't it a decision
about languages? Why should there be a per-language decision? Maybe there are
good reasons for it, maybe there aren't. If there are - what are they?

> Yes the order can include both sans and serif if required. This is the order
> that i've put into my patch.[1]
> 
> Serif: David Libre; David CLM; Liberation Serif; David; Raanana;
> Sans: Nachlieli CLM; Liberation Sans; Arial; Arial Hebrew;
>

First - I'm against the David Libre as the default (see below), but regardless,
I'm personally against mixing serifs and non-serifs in font preference lists.
On the web you usually see something like "super special sans serif fonts; kind
of special sans serif font; helvetica; sans serif" or the same thing but with
all serif fonts. I'd rather have a less-pleasing choice for a default font as a
substitution than switch from serif to sans serif or back.

> I tested the character widths and spacing in MS David vs David CLM and MS
> David is quite cramped comparatively, while David CLM and David Libre have
> close to identical character widths and spacing. 

Ah, but the supposed "cramping" is what makes it a great running text font. The
close-to-identical character widths and spacing are a _problem_, not a benefit:
They prevent your eyes from properly capturing entire words and disrupt the
reading sequence, making it a sequence of recognizing individual glyphs and
putting them together. For this reason alone I would not at all recommend David
Libre as the default; I'd even take a nice sans serif in its stead. I'd even
insist that whatever I got in David Libre be changed to something else before
reading it (if I can).

> If you are referring to the line spacing

No, the line spacing is less the issue. 

> Assume you mean the Alef would be the heading font, which isnt really out of
> place as we do use a sans font for headings presently - Nachlieli CLM.

Nachlieli doesn't give off the same vibe as Alef. It's much less presumptuous.
To take what I mean to the extreme, suppose you were using some kind of Times
for the body and MS Comic Sans for the headings. It's just... doesn't fit.
Again, I'm taking this to the extreme. See my last attachment.

> So is your order preference of sans is Nachlieli, Liberation Sans, Rubik?

I guess.

(In reply to Yousuf Philips (jay) from comment #22)
> David Libre, Frank Ruhl Hofshi, and Miriam Libre only take up 0.5Mb
> uncompressed, so its not really a problem space-wise, and with 2 variants of
> each, users have more choice, more freedom, and users will be able to tell
> us which of each they prefer in a later poll.

I don't mind the extra fonts in the bundle - as long as you keep all the
weights in.

> > I'm very much against this. We should foster finer use of weights and not
> > cripple the fonts by not bundling their full weight spectrum.
> 
> If... we could correctly handle them in the UI (bug 72944)...

How about if I opened a bug about adding the extra weights in after 72944 is
resolved?

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are the assignee for the bug.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice-bugs/attachments/20171122/4357ad43/attachment.html>