Ubuntu Font Family

Bug #727733
Comment #2

Comment 2 for bug 727733

Revision history for this message

Martin Pool (mbp) wrote on 2011-03-02:

launchpad.png Edit (196.9 KiB, image/png)

I think it's quite important the monospace font at x points look basically the same size as the proportional font at x points. I think it's a fairly serious bug if they don't, and I'd like to see the Ubuntu fonts adopt this as a constraint.

I realize the definition of "size" for fonts is subtle, but also that we would all agree that at the moment Ubuntu Monospace 10 looks a lot smaller than Ubuntu 10. Perhaps we should say they should have the same x-height, or some other metric (or combination of metrics.)

One way to get there would be to increase the character cell size rather than shrinking the characters.

As an example of the problems caused by the current fonts, look at the attachment giving a screenshot of Launchpad using this font: the monospace bug descriptions appear oddly and unintentionally smaller than the other text. (This problem wasn't present with R17.) If the Ubuntu font ships like this, Launchpad might insert CSS rules to scale up the monospace font, but that probably won't get it exactly right, and it may cause knock on annoyances for people using other fonts.

There are cases such as in program documentation where people want for example sample commands to look visually distinct from the rest of the text. Since the Ubuntu monospace font is fairly similar to the proportional font, if they're the same size, it will not be very distinct. However, I think the solution there is for people to set the commands in a different size, weight, or color. Start out consistent in the font itself, and then users can make it look smaller if they want to.

I think that <https://chinstrap.canonical.com/~sladen/ubuntu-mono-beta-r21-demo.pdf> shows another problem with the smaller font used in body text, which is that it looks a bit lower than the baseline of the surrounding text. I think this is just an illusion due to it being slightly smaller, but to me it's still jarring. The final [R21 monospace] looks like it's half-way to being a subscript.

I think it's quite important the monospace font at x points look basically the same size as the proportional font at x points.  I think it's a fairly serious bug if they don't, and I'd like to see the Ubuntu fonts adopt this as a constraint.

I realize the definition of "size" for fonts is subtle, but also that we would all agree that at the moment Ubuntu Monospace 10 looks a lot smaller than Ubuntu 10.  Perhaps we should say they should have the same x-height, or some other metric (or combination of metrics.)

One way to get there would be to increase the character cell size rather than shrinking the characters.

As an example of the problems caused by the current fonts, look at the attachment giving a screenshot of Launchpad using this font: the monospace bug descriptions appear oddly and unintentionally smaller than the other text.  (This problem wasn't present with R17.)  If the Ubuntu font ships like this, Launchpad might insert CSS rules to scale up the monospace font, but that probably won't get it exactly right, and it may cause knock on annoyances for people using other fonts.

There are cases such as in program documentation where people want for example sample commands to look visually distinct from the rest of the text.  Since the Ubuntu monospace font is fairly similar to the proportional font, if they're the same size, it will not be very distinct.  However, I think the solution there is for people to set the commands in a different size, weight, or color.  Start out consistent in the font itself, and then users can make it look smaller if they want to.

I think that <https://chinstrap.canonical.com/~sladen/ubuntu-mono-beta-r21-demo.pdf> shows another problem with the smaller font used in body text, which is that it looks a bit lower than the baseline of the surrounding text.  I think this is just an illusion due to it being slightly smaller, but to me it's still jarring.  The final [R21 monospace] looks like it's half-way to being a subscript.