Fonts

[Rumple Foreskin]

Doc,

I've never found a perfect font, maybe because I'm very hard of seeing and have my screen colors totally screwed up.

Just a note about Courrier. Everyone hates it, except agents. One of the problems is Courier/New Courier prints out very light. There's a free font that can be downloaded from the HP web site that takes care of that problem. DARK COURIER looks the same on your monior (sorry) but the print darkness is similar to that of New Times Roman. Try it, you'll like it.

Rumple

ps: Since I never posted on Doc's other thread, coins first with bills on top. Any other way is a recipe for disaster

 

[raphy]

On screen, I'd much rather read a linear typeface. Unless I'm on a superb hi-res screen, perfectly balanced. The antialias needed to display a reading-size (10 to 12 pt) Times or other serif is not nearly good enough to make it pleasant to look at.

Printed on paper however, that is a whole different ballpark. Times, or Bookman are my favourites for longer texts.

Maybe Lit should give that option to the reader, and not the author?

It does. Your browser can override any setting in a web page. That's the biggest difference between web design and traditional design that a lot of trad. designers don't get. What you design on the paper, isn't necessarily how it will look on the screen, depending on the operating system/browser/graphics card/custom settings/color of the favorite family pet etc of the user.

So if you want to read the stories on lit in Times New Roman, or Abaddon or Windings, or whatever other fonts you have on your PC, you can.

 

[Icingsugar]

So if you want to read the stories on lit in Times New Roman, or Abaddon or Windings, or whatever other fonts you have on your PC, you can.

I can, you can. mr Average Joe who just browse the net and use excel don't know how to change the fonts he sees on a web page, don't know the first thing about this. What I'm saying is that it maybe should be made easier. A little Choose Font dropbox on the page, or something like that? An easy hack for a site manager with some style sheet knowledge.

 

[DirtyJJ]

It does. Your browser can override any setting in a web page. That's the biggest difference between web design and traditional design that a lot of trad. designers don't get. What you design on the paper, isn't necessarily how it will look on the screen, depending on the operating system/browser/graphics card/custom settings/color of the favorite family pet etc of the user.

So if you want to read the stories on lit in Times New Roman, or Abaddon or Windings, or whatever other fonts you have on your PC, you can.

raphy's right about web vs. traditional design - you don't know always what you are going to get on screen, which in my opinion makes designing for the web more challenging and limiting than designing on paper. There are too many variables.

I also agree with Harold - I like Verdana better than Arial and I use Verdana 99% of the time when designing web sites.
DJJ

 

[dr_mabeuse]

So if you want to read the stories on lit in Times New Roman, or Abaddon or Windings, or whatever other fonts you have on your PC, you can.

Wait a minute. Maybe I've been unnecessarily stupid. How do I change the font for viewing?

Icing-- I have my default font in MSWord set to Times New Roman, but sized at 11 points. That seems to work for me. In fact, I can spot a lot of spelling errors just be scanning the text without really reading it, something I can't do with sans-serif fonts.

I've got my own theory as to why serif fonts are easier to read. I seem to read by taking in chunks of text or at least whole words and identifying them on the fly, and fonts with serifs provide more visual information; they provide a more unique pattern. With Arial, I often have to look at the word for a second to identify it. I find adjacent u's, m's, and n's especially tend to blur together in Arial.

---dr.M.

 

[Pure]

I'm very fond of Bookman or some of the bookish fonts (Tahoma, iirc, and New Century Schoolbook), for printed items like important letters. The Courier problem is that the letters are constant, not proportional in width and the line is of constant size, no shading; it's murder on the eyes.

Times New Roman is compressed in width by 10-15 % compared to Bookman. Hard on the eyes, and, afaik more found in newpapers than books.

That said, Verdana, lit's font, does seem to go well on screen, and a recent doc that I wanted to seem 'friendly' was done in Arial 10 pt.

If one were actually sending out a 'hard copy' (for review) I don't think choice of font is a silly question. Certain "E" documents I find myself 'blowing up' to make them readable.

dr mabeuse: if you create or save (your download) as a Word doc, you can change the font at will, from the format menu, after choosing 'select all', under edit. and in any case, 'view,' then 'zoom' changes the apparent size.

changing the screen display font, i'll leave to Weird H and the experts to tell you about.
====

dr m said,
I can spot a lot of spelling errors just be scanning the text without really reading it

I see.

 

[Guest]

So if you want to read the stories on lit in Times New Roman, or Abaddon or Windings, or whatever other fonts you have on your PC, you can.

Ha! If you can read a story written in Wingdings I'd give you a medal.

I like Verdana for reading from the screen, but I type in Times. I've used Ariel on my sites, for the main body text, but I use Kabel Bk for the headers on my personal site (not Psyche Erotica), cos it's pretty. These don't get over-ridden by local settings, because they are produced and inserted onto the site as jpgs.

Lou

 

[Icingsugar]

Ha! If you can read a story written in Wingdings I'd give you a medal.

I like Verdana for reading from the screen, but I type in Times. I've used Ariel on my sites, for the main body text, but I use Kabel Bk for the headers on my personal site (not Psyche Erotica), cos it's pretty. These don't get over-ridden by local settings, because they are produced and inserted onto the site as jpgs.

Lou

I type in Times too, but really big, 16 or 15 pt, depending on what screen resolution I use. You need more pixels to render a serif well on screen. If you use 72 dpi resolution (which I think is what you get from a 600x600 17" screen) and a 10 pt Times, you only have something like 10 x 8 pixels to render a letter on. And even with antialiasing, that makes a serif font pretty ugly to look at IMO.

Of course, each to his/her own.

/Ice - still proposing a Choose Font option on Lit's storypages.

 

[Guest]

I type in Times too, but really big, 16 or 15 pt, depending on what screen resolution I use. You need more pixels to render a serif well on screen. If you use 72 dpi resolution (which I think is what you get from a 600x600 17" screen) and a 10 pt Times, you only have something like 10 x 8 pixels to render a letter on. And even with antialiasing, that makes a serif font pretty ugly to look at IMO.

Of course, each to his/her own.

/Ice - still proposing a Choose Font option on Lit's storypages.

I use 12pt Times, but I do have a 1024x768 flat screen monitor.

Lou

 

[Guest]

I don't like any of the *traditional* plain fonts. In my writing and typing (email, im, etc), I use nicer looking fonts (usually in red).

To me, Arial is just boring.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Okay, I've enjoyed this thread. What's more, I've hung in there with most of the data transfer. But will one of you folks who kinda understands some of this please give me the definition for, "antialiasing."

Rumple (who's so old he began on an Apple IIc) Foreskin

edited to say, ps: Ice-man, I agree with you. It's been my experience that changing the web font settings can produce some unique screens at various sites. For me at least, reading pages of text is unique to Literotica. Most of the time I just copy and paste it into MS Word which I've customized with my favorite reading/writing settings. RF

 

[Guest]

 

[whispering_surrender]

Johnny come lately -- TRS-80 Model 1.

Me too! *smiles*

Whisper

 

[Mhari]

Johnny come lately -- TRS-80 Model 1.

*laughs* HP-2600 mainframe with a buncha dumb terminals. At least, I think it was a 2600...it's been too freakin' long.

 

[Icingsugar]

edited to say, ps: Ice-man, I agree with you. It's been my experience that changing the web font settings can produce some unique screens at various sites. For me at least, reading pages of text is unique to Literotica. Most of the time I just copy and paste it into MS Word which I've customized with my favorite reading/writing settings. RF

That's why it's better to do it on the site you're at, instead of in your browser.

Here is an example of how antoher erotic site, asstr.org have solved the text formatting issue. The reader can change the size to his/her own liking. That could be done here too, and then only on the story text column. No biggie, I could write it myself, if Laurel and firends were interrested.

http://www.asstr.org/files/Collections/Alt.Sex.Stories.Moderated/Year2003/45863

/Ice

ps I didn't check out the story itself, it might be Lit-"unapproved". Lots on asstr is.

 

[Icingsugar]

*laughs* HP-2600 mainframe with a buncha dumb terminals. At least, I think it was a 2600...it's been too freakin' long.

Daddy's Vic-20, 1984. I was 7 yrs old.

I learned to play chess and compose music on it, before I could even write regular Swedish.

And look where that got me.

 

[raphy]

I'm all for people learning how to broaden their horizons. If it hurts their eyes bad enough, then they'll learn how to change it sooner or later. If they don't, then I figure it was never that important to them in the first place, eh?

Yeah, I suck as a graphic designer. Not because I'm no good at it, but because my knowledge of how to make things easy for people clashes with my natural tendency to be a bastard

Oh, and ZX Spectrum, rubber keys. All hail Sir Clive of Sinclair.

Raphy, typing in 12-point times on a 17-inch 1600x1200. (Yes, the letters are very small. No, no one else can read my screen either. Yes, I like them that way.)

 

[Guest]

If it hurts their eyes bad enough, then they'll learn how to change it sooner or later. If they don't, then I figure it was never that important to them in the first place, eh?

Ah, the illusions of youth.

myopically and pre-glaucomically,

Perdita

 

[raphy]

Ah, the illusions of youth.

myopically and pre-glaucomically,

Perdita

Or just assuming that everyone's as driven and possessed of the same manner of forward momentum as me

And if they're not, why not, dammit!

Raph, with a for 'dita

 

[sun_shyne]

Well, maybe if you tie it in with a focus on Saddam's trial.

Perdita

.....

 

[fieryjen]

I guess I'm in the minority here, because I dislike Times New Roman a lot. It just doesn't fulfill any of my personal onscreen font fantasies. Verdana is my favorite font that I use for pretty much everything, so I feel right at home here.