Re: CSS3 @font-face / EOT Fonts - new compromise proposal

Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

> Well, that's another issue making me reluctant to point any out - I know 
> that I don't have a critical eye in this subject.  Thus it's fairly 
> likely that I'll point out something which is merely "nice" and have my 
> point dismissed out-of-hand.  I simply don't know what qualities a font 
> must possess to qualify as "professional", nor am I willing to put in 
> the time to crash-course myself and then search for fonts that satisfy 
> this.  I *do* know that there are many which I am glad to use for my own 
> purposes, and that I'd love to have available for webdesign purposes.
> 
> I also suspect that there qualities that would mark a font as 
> "professional" which are largely irrelevant to making a font "useful" or 
> "nice".  Thus I doubt that an exhaustive search for "professional" free 
> fonts, even had I the skills to make it, would actually be useful here.

Yes, I agree with your analysis.  Fonts may well be both
useful and nice, yet still lack the features that one
would expect in a font created by a master typographer
such as Herman Zapf.  In particular, fonts created by
non-professionals may well lack hints (important when
rendering on low-resolution devices) and the kerning
pairs may be either lacking or noticeably sub-optimal.
Neither of these would prevent the font from being useful
(in some circumstances), and quite probably it could appear
nice to many who read text set in it, but there would
still almost certainly be some aspects which a professional
type designer could legitimately point out as defects.

Philip TAYLOR

Received on Tuesday, 11 November 2008 20:25:36 UTC