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Philip TAYLOR (Ret'd) wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid4964EC7B.3040509@Rhul.Ac.Uk" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">It is unthinkable that I should have the temerity to
disagree with Pierre, but I do think that the statement
</pre>
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Gosh!<br>
<blockquote cite="mid4964EC7B.3040509@Rhul.Ac.Uk" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">With modern screen resolutions, a decently restrained seriffed typeface
will surpass any sans-serif for instant readability.
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
is a subjective one, and therefore needs to be enclosed
in <opinion class="personal"> tags :-)
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That may not be entirely true. In the 1970s--80s, Bob Morris of the
University of Massachussetts did some studies of the innate filters
that seem to favor certain patterns of linewidths and spacings at the
early-vision level of sight, before interpretation begins (Chuck
Bigelow illustrated the same phenomenon at the Stanford "farewell to
lead type" conference in Stanford). Morris's reliably quantifiable
conclusions were associated with the widths of stems and interletter
spacing, together with questions such as word length in various
languages and interline leading, but he did mention that there seemed
to be also an early-vision advantage to seriffed as opposed to
sans-serif faces. It was large enough to be noticeable, though not on
the same level as the phenomena he was studying directly. <br>
<br>
A font in which | (one), | (lower-case l) and | (uppercase I) are
basically indistinguishable unless you adopt the truly ugly forward
hook on the lower-case l is hard to characterize as preferentially
readable. I have been trapped by the similarity more than once, and
have, on a very few occasions, had to resort to loading the offending
text into OpenOffice and choosing a seriffed font. I don't think that
is solely because I am seeing with 75-year-old eyes.<br>
<br>
I recently had to make much use of Syntax on a great number of
illustrations for the University of California publication of Coarelli,
<i>Rome</i>, and I came to appreciate the clean lines of this distant
cousin of Optima when it is set against a background of random
hairlines going every which way. Syntax and Gill Sans are both
triumphs of disciplined design, but would you really want to read even
one volume of Gibbon in either? (I am of course assuming that
<opinion class="personal"> reading a volume of Gibbon is a
desirable activity </opinion>, and that may not be entirely true).<br>
<br>
Pierre MacKay<br>
<br>
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