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Cake day: November 12th, 2023

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  • pyre@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldbeeherhe
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    2 days ago

    we’re not speaking about a computer font, we’re speaking about typography in general. the reason I mentioned them is because the ubiquity was forced by restrictions. we used to type non-english letters without diacritics before different languages got support online. now we don’t have those restrictions either. what you said is not universal; there are different kinds for different uses. just like uppercase and lowercase letters.


  • idk what you mean by universal; this is a typographical choice. the only reason you see more uppercase numbers everywhere is because of typewriters and by extension computers. I don’t think people make a point of lining numbers up with cap height in handwriting.


  • pyre@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldbeeherhe
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    3 days ago

    yeah I said for big sizes. 16 is more mid, and not perfect for segoe’s thin lines. i think verdana is still a bit too bulky for 16 but for any kind of vision impairment it should be great. you might want to try trebuchet. another low contrast default ms font but it’s a bit more humanist and pleasing to look at in those sizes.









  • pyre@lemmy.worldtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldbeeherhe
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    3 days ago

    they’re called lowercase numbers and they’re designed to look good in paragraph text. for example if you’re reading this comment, mentioning the year 1997 suddenly puts four full height characters as if I typed one word in all caps, while in lowercase numbers it would look more like if I typed the word iggy (1 is x height while 9 and 7 have descenders like g and y).

    they’re not designed to be used in math or for longer number sequences. for that you have the full height (uppercase) numbers that most typeface should still have.

    0123456789 in lowercase have the same heights as oizgjpbyfq - just as random as that word’s letter heights are. which is not random at all, you’re just not supposed to use it like that.


  • verdana is great for small sizes on screen. it was designed specifically for that purpose so it would look good with pixellation. it’s probably the most successfully designed Microsoft font to date. if you want to type anything in like 5-6pt font verdana is a great choice. but that also makes it bulky and inelegant at larger font sizes.

    if you want a sans serif default ms font to use in larger sizes the segoe font family is pretty good.