The standard latex font is silly, try palatino!

[fritzvd]

For reference use: http://www.icl.utk.edu/~mgates3/docs/latex-fonts.pdf

[RichardLitt]

@magalhini I need help. Why would I use Palatino? I can see a difference, but I don't have the eyes to really see why I would use one over the other.

[magalhini]

@RichardLitt You don't have to use Palatino, but here it seems like a good improvement. The benefit of a typeface like Palatino is simply the fact that it was specifically designed for long body copy, ie, it has features that won't become too tiring to read or distracting to the eye.

Whatever typeface you choose to go with, just ensure it's been made specifically for body copy. Palatino is old-style, but a good default option 👍

[RichardLitt]

Huh, interesting. What does "specifically designed" mean? Can you point to what aspects? 😄

For instance, let's look at the % symbol. The Palatino example is more canonical, and less catchy than the LaTeX one. Is this an example of where it has been proven to be less exhausting in the long term? What does tiring text look like? What user studies have been done on that?

What does "old-style" mean, too?

I pinged you because I'm curious! Sorry if I seem argumentative 😅

[magalhini]

Don't worry, these differences are really very subtle! And they're not exactly a factual science, either 😛 special characters are usually not a problem for readability, since you don't typically read them. It's things like the apertures and counters of characters (how open is a lowercase c, or g), and the x-height of a typeface (what's the size difference between the top of a lowercase m to the top of an uppercase M?) that, when put all together, dictate the overall shape of the word.

It's hard to tell just by looking at a single character, though there are clues.

A while ago I wrote about x-height and why it matters so much; touching along the way about other concepts like word shape, for example. I'll shamelessly point you in its direction 😅

https://blog.prototypr.io/to-choose-the-right-typeface-look-at-its-x-height-instead-d5ef0967d09c

Hope it helps a little!

[fritzvd]

This is excellent. Thanks Ricardo.

Of course I didn’t mean for @richlitt to feel forced. I just like how legible the palatino font feels as opposed to the default Latex font. It’s just a suggestion. On Sat, 10 Mar 2018 at 02:56, Ricardo Magalhães notifications@github.com wrote:

Don't worry, these differences are really very subtle! And they're not exactly a factual science, either 😛 special characters are usually not a problem for readability, since you don't typically read them. It's things like the apertures and counters of characters (how open is a lowercase c, or g), and the x-height of a typeface (what's the size difference between the top of a lowercase m to the top of an uppercase M?) that, when put all together, dictate the overall shape of the word.

It's hard to tell just by looking at a single character, though there are clues.

A while ago I wrote about x-height and why it matters so much; touching along the way about other concepts like word shape, for example. I'll shamelessly point you in its direction 😅

https://blog.prototypr.io/to-choose-the-right-typeface-look-at-its-x-height-instead-d5ef0967d09c

Hope it helps a little!

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[RichardLitt]

This all seems to come down to personal opinion. In this case, I like the contrast of Palatino more. I am going to merge this. Thanks, @fritzvd and @magalhini!