Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Questions and discussion about B-Greek policies or the B-Greek forum.

Can you see the text correctly?

Yes
24
96%
No
1
4%
 
Total votes: 25

Jonathan Robie
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Nigel Chapman wrote:I've just been through the fonts in the Insert > Special Character in Libre Office... The Linux sans-serifs fonts with Greek Extended are: DejaVu Sans (+ Light, + Condensed), Ubuntu (sugg. Light) and FreeSans. Except for Ubuntu, these also have the "Basic Hebrew" block. And FreeSans is the nicest, though like all of them it needs some extra leading. So the Linux font-family I'd pick would be:

Code: Select all

font-family:  "FreeSans", "DejaVu Sans", "Ubuntu";
That's going to depend on your Linux distribution and what software you have installed. For instance, Ubuntu is not available on most Fedora systems (which is what I use).

I do have DejaVu Sans, and never intentionally installed it. I didn't have FreeSans, but it's a Gnu font, and it's in my package database. I don't have Ubuntu, and it's not in my package database (I can install it, but it's not one of the normal Fedora fonts, and usually only Ubuntu systems will install it). The GFS Didot fonts *are* in my package database. And it's also in the package database for Ubuntu.

I also see that the GFS Didot fonts are in the package database for Ubuntu. So perhaps for Linux, we could use this:

Code: Select all

font-family:  "GFS Didot", "FreeSans", "DejaVu Sans";
I'm fine with your recommendations for Mac and Windows.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Nigel Chapman
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Nigel Chapman »

Hi Jonathon,

Ubuntu has all three fonts, but I don't expect other systems to have them all. FreeSans is the GNU FreeFont and is a few years old; it should be very widespread. DejaVu Sans is a remake of Bitstream Vera Sans, also nearly universal in the last few years. These three should cover all systems, and they implement all of the glyphs in Greek Extended and Basic Hebrew, which is main requirement.

Off to sleep presently, just a few other quick thoughts...

1. @font-face has some complexities because of different browser support for font formats; Google Font Directory hides this layer of complexity (e.g. serving .eot font format to IE8, .woff to FF 3.5+, etc), but we'll have to deal with it if we want to use unicode-range.
2. We can't specify a Linux-only stylesheet (well we can, but it probably requires some CSS hacks or server-side config; best avoided); so the Linux/Mac/PC font font-family list has to be combined. This means the first matching font will be applied to everything: English, Greek and Hebrew, which is at least viable for the current sans-serifs, but not good otherwise.
3. User-preferred fonts will be better behaved if we are able to limit them to just the language for which we know they are suitable; this in turn lets us support more preferred fonts, as in my CSS for .greek. So my preference is still to tag the Greek and Hebrew in the user's browser with Javascript. Note that this doesn't change their posting at all on the server side, so there's no reprocessing if we change or deactivate the JS later on.
4. If we go with blanket Didot for .postbody we don't get Hebrew characters in the same font, and may still need to arrange support for them separately.

Nigel.
"When eras die their legacies are left to strange police." -- Clarence Day
Nigel Chapman | http://chapman.id.au
Louis L Sorenson
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Louis L Sorenson »

My Android Sprint phone (Browser 2.2.2) still shows square boxes. Is there any fix for this? Do I need to install a font on it? I have no idea what to do with it.
Jason Hare
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Jason Hare »

Louis L Sorenson wrote:My Android Sprint phone (Browser 2.2.2) still shows square boxes. Is there any fix for this? Do I need to install a font on it? I have no idea what to do with it.
There is indeed a fix. Download and install the free app called "Fontomizer." Once installed, open it from your app menu and look in the U section of the font list for "Ubuntu" and "Ubuntu Bold." Download and install those fonts, then go to the main settings menu and choose "Display." From there, go to "Font Style" and choose "Ubuntu Regular TTF" from the list.

Et voilà! You've got Greek support on your Android phone. This worked for me, and I'm quite happy with the results.

Let me know how it goes.

By the way, I'm using the Galaxy S GT-I9000T with Android 2.2.
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Jonathan Robie »

OK, here's the current formula:

Code: Select all

.postbody {
	font-family:  /* Linux */ "FreeSans", "DejaVu Sans", /* Windows + Mac */ "Microsoft Sans Serif", "Tahoma", "Arial", /* Fallback */ sans-serif; 
	font-size: 1.35em; 
	line-height: 145%; 
I think I may want to reduce the size and the line spacing a little though, not much text fits on my laptop screen, and the size is disproportionate to the size of the higher level menus, so if I shrink my browser window down, I can't read the menus very easily.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Jonathan Robie wrote:I think I may want to reduce the size and the line spacing a little though, not much text fits on my laptop screen, and the size is disproportionate to the size of the higher level menus, so if I shrink my browser window down, I can't read the menus very easily.
This new font size does not display well on my system.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Jonathan Robie »

sccarlson wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:I think I may want to reduce the size and the line spacing a little though, not much text fits on my laptop screen, and the size is disproportionate to the size of the higher level menus, so if I shrink my browser window down, I can't read the menus very easily.
This new font size does not display well on my system.
OK, I'm keeping the new fonts, but going back to the old text size.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Carlson
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Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
Location: Melbourne
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Jonathan Robie wrote:OK, I'm keeping the new fonts, but going back to the old text size.
It's the .postbody .content style that now causing the problem (ugliness).

Stephen
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Change that. The problem I'm having is that "Microsoft Sans Serif" font is an old VGA font on my system, so it is not anti-aliased or anything that makes it appear nice.

Did someone request or need this font to be so high on the list before Tahoma or Arial?

Stephen
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Jason Hare
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Re: Having problems viewing fonts? (Call for Guinea Pigs!)

Post by Jason Hare »

sccarlson wrote:Change that. The problem I'm having is that "Microsoft Sans Serif" font is an old VGA font on my system, so it is not anti-aliased or anything that makes it appear nice.

Did someone request or need this font to be so high on the list before Tahoma or Arial?

Stephen
My problem is that my system was picking up DejaVu Sans, which I think is just ugly. I actually deleted it from my Fonts folder so that it would show up as Microsoft Sans MS - which I generally don't like because of how it treats italics. But, the Greek font on Microsoft Sans MS looks good (at least here).
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
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