Style: Italic '3' knee might benefit from being less flat

[Paul Sladen]

The italic '3' is currently purely slanted, which means that the knee in centre of the '3' remains parallel to the baseline.

This might be slightly improved if the slope of the cut-line was rotated to be very slightly upward (perpendicular to the angle of slant, rather than parallel to the baseline).

See not particularly good example PDF (I am not a font designer)...

[David Marshall (dave-daltonmaag)]

If you think about how you would perform the strokes of a 3 which does
that, you'll see that it looks and feels quite uncomfortable.

In some styles, the central arm is angled downwards, because it follows
naturally from how the upper bowl is formed. But in straightforward,
relatively symmetric sans designs like Ubuntu the central arm tends to
be completely horizontal. I can't think of any which point upwards.

Dave

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Yes, perhaps down, or perhaps just the level of the middle arm/knee, or it could be exaggeration at certain hinted sizes.

I flagged this up when I saw an italic '3' on its own and it looked out of place; the '5' and '8' italic numerals have more angle to their mid-sections. It could well be that down is the answer. Perhaps having a dead-straight line in a cursive glyph with no other straight in it is making it look out of place (to my eyes).

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Won't Fix based on David's explanation.