Re: New LilyPond website

[David Kastrup]

Andrew Bernard <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello John,
>
> You appear to be a person of very fixed opinions.

Uh, he works in web design.  I would expect him not to work from the
inspiration of the moment but rather from experience, learning, and
knowledge.

> The amount of effort contemporary typographers put into making both
> sans and serif fonts good for screen viewing is very large. This
> matter is not a confrontation or a battle to be won with arguments,
> with some victor ultimately emerging. It is a matter of taste and
> refinement.

Whatever that means.  "Serifed" is not equal to "serifed", "sans-serif"
not equal to "sans-serif".

The serifed Computer Modern font family used by TeX requires
high-contrast media and looks clumsy at 300dpi.  It starts matching its
design criteria at 600dpi and higher.  That is because of its use of
hair lines for achieving both closed letter shapes as well as visually
open leading.

In contrast, the serifed Times Roman was designed to get along with
resolutions of 75dpi by not even attempting to play with different
objectives at different scales.  It is created for coarse paper and
bleeding inks.

Neither make a terrific match to the realities of a computer screen.

And sans-serif fonts can be designed as display and as text fonts as
well.  Good fonts may serve in several roles, but they still have their
areas of specialization.

> Are you going to dictate to The New York Times, for example, that they
> convert their serif to sans?

You appear to be a person of very fixed opinions...

> The sans you have chosen for your demonstration site is utterly
> soulless.

Typography is not all that much about "soul".  It's about readability
and consistency.  I mean, "Comic Sans" has soul.

At any rate, I don't see ourselves at a point where the most
quality-determining influence on LilyPond's web pages is the font
choice.  So it would probably make sense to save that particular
debating field for later, when more prominent questions have been
resolved.

-- 
David Kastrup