Comment 0 for bug 685380

(See also bug #677134 regarding general choices of serifs).

Of the two main versions seen of the monospace numerical '1' seen so far, the ones with similarity to the main Ubuntu Regular feel too sparse because they don't have any serifs, and even the ones taking the full serif approach can feel a bit week; the down-tick at the head can disappear and could do with perhaps more emphasis: at the moment it is a copy of the one in the Regular with only minor scaling.

There is ambiguity between 'l' and '1' when the other glyph is not available for comparison. The first time I hit this in-anger was on IRC where my main nickname is '<sladen>' (sierra-lima-alpha-delta) and my fallback nickname is '<s1aden>' (sierra-one-alpha-delta); (mis)presuming that I had been given the fallback nickname, I tried to rename myself, only to find I was called that already. Bug #677134 comment #7 also notes the opportunity for confusion if the '1' or 'l' counterpart is not visually available for comparison.