Please use DejaVu Sans Condensed as the default font

[Simon Law]

This is a wishlist bug that I discussed with Ken Wiimer.

We now ship DejaVu Sans in Feisty, which contains Condensed and Condensed Bold flavours. These are great screen fonts that are quite legible and can be used for user-interface elements like window titles, menus, and tooltips. They're clean, since they are based on Bitstream Vera Sans, but also thin so that more information fits in the available space.

I recommend against using them as the document fonts, since their hinting is not up to par with Bitstream Vera Sans, so they look a bit blurry. But for everything else, they're excellent.

There is some concern that DejaVu is not good for character sets outside the Latin-Greek-Cyrillic languages, so if that's the case, we can cut out non-LGC characters and rely on fontconfig to pick the right glyph to display. Fedora ships with DejaVu LGC, which seems to be the correct decision.

In summary, please use DejaVu LGC Sans Condensed as the default user-interface font for Ubuntu and Kubuntu.

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

I hope that you realize that changing the default font of the operating system is a gigantic change. I really cannot stress this enough. It will affect everybody, and everybody is going to notice it. Making such a change requires extensive discussion and consideration by everybody involved in the making of this system, including the programmers and most notably the designers.

I'm currently at work, so I'm unable to see how this font looks for all screen elements. It would seem that if the hinting is not as good as DejaVu Sans, that's a big argument against using DejaVu Sans Condensed. Could you attach two screenshots, one that shows our current default font and one that shows DejaVu Sans Condensed? And I personally would prefer some more screenshots that show multiple amounts of hinting ("medium", "low", "none").

[ZhengPeng Hou (zhengpeng-hou)]

We switched Dejavu Sans back to Sans serif recently, because we shall make CJK characters can be displayed correcttly, and we have used Dejavu defaultly before feisty, there had problems for CJK users.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you, I'll fix that with the new libgnome upload

[Simon Law (sfllaw)]

We may want to test DejaVu Sans Condensed with people with that don't use the Latin-Greek-Cyrillic character sets. DejaVu Sans is sometimes poor for those characters. We may need a special DejaVu LGC Sans Condensed, so that fontconfig falls back on another font.

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

Sebastien Bacher, did you even read what I said? If you're "fixing" this, you should realize that this isn't your average bug. This is a gigantic OS-wise change that will affect everybody. We first would need to open up a discussion on whether we /want/ to change this before actually doing it.

[Jimmy Angelakos (vyruss)]

I've been meaning to submit this but somehow I forgot. It's the first thing I change when I install Ubuntu for me or others and everybody is relieved when they see Deja Vu Sans Condensed as the default font. It takes up much less space on the screen than the grotesque Deja Vu Sans, it is very legible and, aesthetically, everybody I've asked from the local LUG finds it a much better default font. I understand Michiel's concerns over testing, but not over appearance. Ubuntu looks more like a Commodore 64 with the default font and more like a 2007 OS with Condensed.

Just my 2 euro cents :)

[Kenneth Wimer (kwwii)]

The point behind this is to use a condensed font for latin characters which are shown on the desktop and interface (not in documents or inside app windows).

Apparently the best idea would be to remove the messed up Cyrillic, Asian fonts which do not work anyway (making Sans default to a decent font for those languages).

Best of all would be the ability to set a condensed style for UI elements only and remove the poor quality font elements from deja vu so that languages needing those default to another font.

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

My concern /is/ appearance, Jimmy. Not testing. I'm active in the Ubuntu artwork team, and I believe that making such a change is /not/ something that you simply propose and accept in an afternoon. This requires more thought, and I believe that the artwork team should be involved here as well.

I'm still at work, so maybe someone could make a screenshot of this font. I'd like to see how it looks. The Bitstream Vera Sans font is a good font, and I believe that the condensed version will have to look very good for it to obsolete the non-condensed version.

I'm also worried about the structure of a condensed font. It's not just the amount of text that you can cram on a screen that matters, really. If you've studied type design, especially their screen appearances, you'll find that there are other very important aspects. Why use a condensed font if it's less legible than an extended font, for instance?

Just saying that "Ubuntu looks like a Commodore 64" is not enough for me.

[Simon Law (sfllaw)]

This is the proposed type scheme for Feisty. We'll use Bitstream Vera Sans for document text and DejaVu Sans Condensed for the desktop theme.

There is some concern that DejaVu is not good for character sets outside the Latin-Greek-Cyrillic languages, so if that's the case, we can cut out non-LGC characters and rely on fontconfig to pick the right glyph to display. Fedora ships with DejaVu LGC, which seems to be the correct decision.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Michiel, no need to panic, we can easily give it a try and switch the font back before feisty, that's jut a proposed change before freeze on an unstable distribution

[ZhengPeng Hou (zhengpeng-hou)]

We just switch back to Sans Serif recently in kubuntu, for using
Dejavu Sans, CJK chareacters can not be displayed correctly, I don't
think we need test again. And in gnome desktop environment, we can
display our characters ootb, for it use Sans Serif, because we have
remapped CJK fonts to Sans Serif and Sans.
2007/1/26, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden>:
> Michiel, no need to panic, we can easily give it a try and switch the
> font back before feisty, that's jut a proposed change before freeze on
> an unstable distribution
>
> --
> Please use DejaVu Sans Condensed as the default font
> https://launchpad.net/bugs/81608
>
> --
> kubuntu-bugs mailing list
> <email address hidden>
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/kubuntu-bugs
>

[Simon Law (sfllaw)]

ZhengPing,

Thanks for your input. It means that we should definitely use the LGC version to prevent this problem. It's not shipped with Ubuntu right now, but this should not be a big issue.

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

You know, I really don't think that this font is all that great. The hinting is really, really off. Or even non-existent. And, as I suspected, the font does not have the optimal screen font structure. Condensed fonts are more difficult to read, most of the time, and that is why I was skeptical from the beginning. I don't think that cramming more information in a less readable font is going to do much good.

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

By the way, I also believe that this font's usability goes up when using the "low" amount of hinting. It causes the top and bottom row of pixels to be correctly hinted. If we use this font as default, I believe that we should also start using that setting as the default hinting. (Should I open up a new bug report for this?)

[Jimmy Angelakos (vyruss)]

It does look different and maybe better with the "Slight" hinting setting (I believe that's what you meant), but what bewilders me is that, on my machine, the other hinting settings (Medium, Full) have no effect at all (I use Subpixel RGB Smoothing).

[Rob van der Linde (robvdl)]

I personally don't like "DejaVu Sans Condensed" as the default font in OpenOffice, because it's "different" and does not match the rest of the Ubuntu desktop.

If everything else in Ubuntu uses "DejaVu Sans", then why should OpenOffice.org default to "DejaVu Sans Condensed".

In my opinion, this makes the menu fonts in OpenOffice look too thin, and out of place, like it doesn't blend in well enough with the rest of the Ubuntu desktop.

I have unticked "use system font", and added a font subsitution from "DejaVu Sans Condensed" to "DejaVu Sans" in OpenOffice in Feisty, and personally think it looks much better like that.

Just my thoughts on this anyway.

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

A while ago, I replied to this bug about not liking the font at all. It seemed that a more extended font like DejaVu Sans was more readable, due to the fact that broad fonts with a large x-height are simply found to lend themselves very well for reading on a computer screen (as proved by the popularity of fonts such as Verdana and Bitstream Vera Sans on the Internet). However, most of my concern was due to the fact that DejaVu Sans Condensed didn't seem to have any hinting at all on any setting other than "slight". I must say that with "slight" as hinting, it does look very good, and, arguably, more modern than DejaVu Sans.

[Jan Niklas Hasse (jhasse)]

In my opinion DejaVu Sans Condensed looks better, too. Also some webpages are broken due the width of DejaVu Sans. (like http://www.pons.de )

Maybe a request for a hinted DejaVu Sans Condensed should be sent to the DejaVu developpers?

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

I'm currently unable to check on how that website looks with Condensed, as I'm at work, but I'd expect that the breakage is due to the site designers having done a bad job rather than the font being incompatible. Making a design rely on the width of a font is always a bad idea (it also probably wasn't designed with Bitstream Vera Sans in mind, anyway).

We do need a hinted DejaVu Sans Condensed at some point, but I believe that it does look good enough for production on "slight" hinting. Maybe I'm biased, though, because I prefer the "slight" hinting in most cases.

[Jan Niklas Hasse (jhasse)]

Here's another example where DejaVu Sans destroys a svg image:
http://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/diagram.svg
should look like this:
http://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/diagram.png

[Jan Niklas Hasse (jhasse)]

hmm... maybe I'm wrong, when I watch the image with another application then firefox, it works. Sorry for the interruption then.

I found an older discussion about this subject:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2006-March/016949.html

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

I don't see how DejaVu Sans could have broken that image. I've not
made many SVG graphics with non-outline text in them, but it would
seem to me that you can never be certain about how it will be rendered.

That SVG graphic you linked to seems to have "Bitstream Vera Sans"
hardcoded in it as font. This is a good thing, as it means there is
(should be) no uncertainty about how the font will look on other
people's computers. If a system has Bitstream Vera Sans installed on
it, the image should display correctly. I'm unsure how a completely
different font that happens to also be the system's default font,
DejaVu Sans, could cause this image to be rendered differently. Am I
missing something?

Michiel Sikma <email address hidden>
Web designer and programmer

On 10-apr-2007, at 16:35, jhasse wrote:

> Here's another example where DejaVu Sans destroys a svg image:
> http://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/diagram.svg
> should look like this:
> http://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/diagram.png
>
> --
> Please use DejaVu Sans Condensed as the default font
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/81608
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

Ah, I see. In that case, ignore my last message too, since it seems
to be a Firefox bug.

Michiel Sikma <email address hidden>
Web designer and programmer

On 10-apr-2007, at 16:43, jhasse wrote:

> hmm... maybe I'm wrong, when I watch the image with another
> application
> then firefox, it works. Sorry for the interruption then.

[Jan Niklas Hasse (jhasse)]

I think you're right. It must be something else because this image is broken.

well, I just noticed that pons.de has a new design which is now working with DejaVu Sans. But I found another website which doesn't like right with DejaVu Sans, it's the bottom of youtube.com. Because they might change this I attached a screenshot.

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

Again, it seems to be the result of bad design. Try increasing the
font size while looking at that footer. You'll find that it's set to
a static height, and is unable to adapt to different font sizes.

I think that the "footBotDiv" id is the culprit. http://youtube.com/
css/base_yts1175727411.css

Michiel Sikma <email address hidden>
Web designer and programmer

On 10-apr-2007, at 17:18, jhasse wrote:

> I think you're right. It must be something else because this image is
> broken.
>
>
> well, I just noticed that pons.de has a new design which is now
> working with DejaVu Sans. But I found another website which doesn't
> like right with DejaVu Sans, it's the bottom of youtube.com.
> Because they might change this I attached a screenshot.
>
> ** Attachment added: "youtube.jpg"
> http://librarian.launchpad.net/7242645/youtube.jpg

[Richard Midwinter (rich-midwinter)]

I'm just a user, but now that we're seeing widescreen displays and pretty large resolutions, the last thing I want is a condensed font.

[Rich Johnson (nixternal)]

Has there been any talks on this further at UDS or IRC at all? Is this feasible or are there no plans to implement such a task?

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

I think it's a difficult issue. DejaVu Sans is a very good font, as
is DejaVu Sans Condensed. The former has the advantage of being more
extended, which aids readability, and the latter might be slightly
more elegant and allows for more information to be shown on the screen.

In any case, a consensus is necessary for such a massive change to
occur. Changing the default font is not something that's decided
very easily. It will affect every single user in a significant way.
A font can make or break the communication with the user, after all.
So maybe the right way to go about this change is to start a public
debate on the issue.

Michiel

On 28-feb-2008, at 3:23, Richard Johnson wrote:

> Has there been any talks on this further at UDS or IRC at all? Is this
> feasible or are there no plans to implement such a task?
>
> --
> Please use DejaVu Sans Condensed as the default font
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/81608
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

As per the decision made today at the Kubuntu meeting. Kubuntu is switching to Liberation for 10.04.

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

I've seen the Liberation font, it's very nice and probably a lot better than
either one of the fonts discussed here, judging from the samples. I'm not on
my Ubuntu box right now, do you have a screenshot showing how it looks as
rendered with the system's default anti-aliasing settings?

Michiel

On 30 March 2010 02:41, Harald Sitter <email address hidden> wrote:

> As per the decision made today at the Kubuntu meeting. Kubuntu is
> switching to Liberation for 10.04.
>
> ** Changed in: kubuntu-default-settings (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Won't Fix
>
> --
> Please use DejaVu Sans Condensed as the default font
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/81608
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

The Liberation fonts exist only for width compatibility with documents that were using Helvetica and Times New Roman. They are too ugly to use for anything else, and we won't be using them in Ubuntu's interface. As described in <http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/308>, Dalton Maag is working on a new interface font for Ubuntu, currently scheduled for 10.10.

[Michiel Sikma (msikma)]

So basically, Liberation is meant to be the default serif, sans-serif and
monospace in documents such as web pages? Just saw some screenshots of
Liberation being used as the system font, and while I don't think it's ugly,
I can understand what you mean. Nice to hear that Dalton Maag have been
commissioned to make a new font.

Michiel

On 30 March 2010 11:42, Matthew Paul Thomas <email address hidden> wrote:

> The Liberation fonts exist only for width compatibility with documents
> that were using Helvetica and Times New Roman. They are too ugly to use
> for anything else, and we won't be using them in Ubuntu's interface. As
> described in <http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/308>, Dalton Maag
> is working on a new interface font for Ubuntu, currently scheduled for
> 10.10.
>
> ** Changed in: libgnome (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Won't Fix
>
> --
> Please use DejaVu Sans Condensed as the default font
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/81608
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>