Add the droid fonts and make it the default for Kubuntu

[Fred van Zwieten]

This is the font for the android platform. I'm using it for a while now and it looks great on both TFT and traditional monitors. It has an Apache license, so I think it's OK to use it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_(font). See also http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=178710

[Duane Hinnen (duanedesign)]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_fonts

[Duane Hinnen (duanedesign)]

Thank you for taking the time to make Ubuntu better. Since what you submitted is not really a bug, or a problem, but rather an idea to improve Ubuntu, you are invited to post your idea in Ubuntu Brainstorm at https://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ where it can be discussed, voted by the community and reviewed by developers. Thanks for taking the time to share your opinion!

[Javier Jardón (jjardon)]

See http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/4924/

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

We don't see the overall benefit.

My personal worries are:
* that it is not-as complete as dejavu (current default because it has a very wide range of supported languages)
* since it is a very narrow font it might not be readable for visual impaired people (or at least not as good as dejavu)

Therefore I am going to close this bug as won't fix. If you have proof that neither of these worries are justified please reopen the report.

[Fred van Zwieten (fvzwieten)]

Well, at the very least make a package of it and add it to the default installed fonts.

[soc (simon-ochsenreither)]

I packaged it, it is available from my PPA.

I'm having problems with REVU at the moment, so I can't tell how that works out ...

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ttf-droid

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

Also see http://troy-sobotka.blogspot.com/2008/07/why-droid-isnt-answer.html

[soc (simon-ochsenreither)]

The article on this blog had not much substance and quite some bogus arguments ...
I felt like this was one of these "If everyone likes it, someone must critize something".

For instance:
- He compares a big paragraph of text with a Sans Serif font (Droid Sans) with a Serif font (MgOpenCanonica) and comes to the result the Serif one is much more readable.
a) The Serif example has much more line spacing than the Sans Serif one, making it much more readable. This comparison is unfair.
b) This isn't about paragraphs full of text, this is about single words like "Menu", "Applications", "Places" etc.

- Then he compares Droid Serif to MgOpenCanonica, where he favors the second one.
a) subjective, personal taste?!
b) Choosing a font size of at least 40pt doesn't mean anything when a GUI uses something in the range from 8 to 10. MgOpenCanonica's Serif won't survive that font size, Droid Serif's may.

And from my point of view I have to ask:
- Does MgOpenCanonica have a Sans and a Monospace variant like Droid?
- Does MgOpenCanonica come with full suppport for Asian languages like Droid?
   http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/4924/ (last comment)
- Does MgOpenCanonica has a glyph coverage comparable to Droid?
- Does MgOpenCanonica have bytecode instructions for hinting like Droid?

In my humble opinion, the author doesn't have much clue when it comes to user interface design ...
I originally wrote a comment on that blog which 'surprisingly' never appeared.

[Troy James Sobotka (troy-sobotka)]

@soc: You really missed the point of the article.

Design is about context. Readability is subjective and relative to context.

If you care to discuss matters, feel free to email me. I would encourage you to do a little homework and research before you start analyzing typography however.