🚀 go-pugleaf

Brent Byer pointed out an error in my last posting: I should have said
Linotron 202, not Linotron 101.  Silly me, thinking that model numbers went
up as time marched along.  Brent also pointed out something I forgot-- the
Mergenthaler 202 did a horrible job of scaling up because of deficiencies
in its scaling algorithm: above 48 point you can see flat lines on rounded
portions of characters.  For this reason-- not for any aesthetic reason--
they had to offer different masters for display sizes.

In article <7660@brl-smoke.ARPA>, gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
> It's not a matter of what one is "used to", it's a matter of legibility.
> The human visual system is rather non-linear in most of its processing...

Let's face it, this is all a matter of opinion.  Personally I think that
when you're publishing text in a small point size, you're better off using 
Bembo (or similar font that looks good at small sizes) rather than a smaller
master of Palatino (or similar font that looks good at medium sizes).

What I don't like is having different design sizes mixed together.  When
I see old books in (let's say) Times Roman, the footnotes look like they're
in a different font than the body type.  They aren't.  They're just produced
from different masters.  The clash of design type is almost as ugly, in my
opinion, as typography by beginners who use every available font on a single
page, just to demonstrate their virtuosity, but doing just the opposite.

I agree with you that sans-serif fonts are less legible than serif fonts.
But this is exactly why they're often used in advertising copy-- Madison
Avenue sure doesn't want you to actually *read* that stuff.

It's odd that Helvetica-- the most popular sans-serif font in the US-- is
also one of the worst (Avant Garbage is the worst).  In France, Univers is
the most popular sans-serif font, and I think it's superior to Helvetica.
Let's face it, this is all a matter of opinion.  To my knowledge there are
no scientific studies showing which fonts are more legible than others.

Many widely-cited studies are often used to support positions that the
original studies cannot support.  For example, an IBM study showing that
ragged-right *typewritten* text is more legible than right-justified text
is often cited by people who believe in ragged-right *typeset* text with
religious fervor.  The original study didn't even consider typeset text,
so its conclusions should not be applied to typeset text.  With typeset
text, I find right-justified text more legible than ragged-right, but in
the case of monospaced text, I agree with the IBM study.