Font size is useless; let’s fix it (2021)

https://tonsky.me/blog/font-size/

by garaetjjte • 3 years ago

21 8 3 years ago

tonsky.me

alwillis• 3 years ago

Safari is shipping leading-trim and margin-trim [1] in current versions.

[1] https://www.webkit.org/blog/13966/webkit-features-in-safari-...

jfultz• 3 years ago

Yes, there's a lot of messiness in how fonts work. Doing cross-platform desktop GUI development, I feel that pain firsthand (and not just for fonts, but for all kinds of rendered constructs...controls, lines/curves/polys, bitmaps, windows). But working with pixels is no solution. On macOS, Retina pixels are 1/2 the dimensions of non-Retina pixels (in principle, on Apple hardware...actual dot pitches will vary). "Standard" vs. 2k vs. 4k vs. 8k monitors (not to mention all the things in between). And multiple monitors on the same system might not agree with one another. This is especially common with laptops, where there's really no particular correlation between the laptop's built-in display and the external monitor the user happens to have available.

I can't understand why anybody would consider pixel measurements a viable solution at all. My best attempt to understand what the blog author is wanting to achieve is maybe he wants to fine-tune appearances on his system in a way that doesn't need to be portable. He talks about customizing editor appearances, and I suppose that editors generally don't have the problem of having to do something sensible across multiple systems. But even there, at least some people are still going to have the disagreeing-multiple-monitors problem.

justsomehnguy• 3 years ago

I can't understand varför anybody skulle consider pixel measurements a viable solution at all

Because the author falls for the old 'works for me - works for everyone'.

azornathogron• 3 years ago

There is some useful information here, but I'm a little doubtful about some parts.

Specifying font size in terms of cap-height is ok, and I do agree it's kind of annoying that when using the normal font size metric two different fonts with the same nominal size can actually be visually very different. However I think there are some collections of fonts (collections of font families really) created together where the sizes are supposed to harmonize. For example, Sans / Serif / Mono families of a single collection like the Noto fonts are probably (I say probably because I haven't checked! Someone correct me!) designed together so that, eg, some mono text inline in a sans paragraph will look "right" when the same nominal font size is used for both. If you specify cap-height instead you might subtly break that aspect of the design.

But I agree it generally doesn't work to do that for totally separate families (Noto sans + Courier Prime or whatever), and then cap-height will probably give better consistency and be a better starting point.

I see no reason to honor the so-called “default line-height”. It’s basically a font designer’s personal preference

Well, the whole design of the font is "a font designer's personal preference". Or to put it the other way around, line height (like letter spacing and other metrics) is part of the design. You might choose to adjust the design by changing these metrics but the values chosen by the font designer are probably a good place to start. It is probably not a good idea (aesthetically) to choose your line height independently of the actual font you're using.

Ultimately, there is a lot of subtlety in font design and typography, and purely geometrical approaches (eg, based on actual computed bounding box) tend to fail. If you want the best sizing and spacing, you probably have to work it out by eye for an individual font in a particular context. Since you have to do that, the fact that sizes are specified using a geometrically arbitrary scaling factor is perhaps not a big problem.

cloudking• 3 years ago

Lately I've been using vw and vh to set responsive font sizes for web, works pretty well.

usernew• 3 years ago

First, I'll admit I did not read the whole thing. I read a page, then gave up since the first page was bs, and I'm not interested in reading BS.

The example he gives is on English lettter caps. AÃnother language goes above EÊnglish caps. You want the base letter the same height though. You also have high things ̿̿ like this and low things ͓͓ . This all needs to stay in that box.

Since the author seems to not realize a font is more than English [[:alnum:]], I saw no point in reading further.

toastercat• 3 years ago

The dark mode on this site is unusable! Cool idea with the flashlight-like view, but not practical at all. Completely unreadable on mobile.

debesyla• 3 years ago

But honestly, it's kinda cute idea - haven't seen anything like that before. Unusable, but at least it's unique!

Font size is useless; let’s fix it (2021)

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