Canonical Preparing Updated Ubuntu Font For Ubuntu 23.04

[CochainComplex]

This line is only to trigger us, right ? "This latest call for testing follows last week's soliciting for more Steam Snap testing. "

[ll1025]

If I put on my tinfoil hat, then I'd say it has been forced on Canonical by three-letter-agencies so they can datestamp documents, and detect modern forgeries of old documents.

Ah, yes. Perfect bank notes, completely undone by use of the default font. Ubuntu's switch to Comic Sans truly would be the bane of counterfeiters everywhere.

I can smell a screenplay here: Nicholas Cage, pursuing a lead on the Rosetta Stone-- "But wait, those are wingdings!"

[Old Grouch]

...the bane of counterfeiters everywhere.

I was making big money. The trouble was, it was ⅛" too big.

[acobar]

No sir, I don't like it.

Specifically, it's the lower case U. It looks like the lower case V got drunk and is doing whatever it can to stand up. If y'all look close, the lowercase U is an inverted lowercase N. They're the same thing. Then you look closer and realize that the lowercase M is a copy of the lowercase N that's taking a pee. They really need to redesign that M. The 2nd hump on that M doesn't seem follow the design paradigm the rest of the lettering seems to use. It looks like they put real thought into 25/26 lowercase letters and whet "Oh Snap, we forgot 'm'!" at the last minute. The lower stems on the lowercase P and Q look too short when compared to the upper stems on the lowercase B, H, and D. The stylistic curve you see on the tops of the lowercase B and D and bottom of the lowercase P and Q aren't as pronounced on the lowercase G and H so the G and H look like they belong to a different, but similar, font. All the lowercase but not-full-case fonts should be shrunk by 3-5% (like "a" and "c", not "b" or "t"). They look too tall.

In regards to the uppercase letters, the middle of A is too low compared to the the rest of the uppercase letters. G looks funky without it's middle. Q looks like a balloon. 4 looks weird with that slight curve and has the same issue as the uppercase A with the middle being too low compared to the rest of the font.

I guess, to each, their own.

At least for me, most of your criticism seems to be invalid. The thing, I think, they should work a bit better is kerning. Of course, it is not the "best of all" fonts I saw, but it is good, and at many sizes, even small ones, and are nice to have, even more when we compare to other open/free font projects.

[skeevy420]

I guess, to each, their own.

At least for me, most of your criticism seems to be invalid. The thing, I think, they should work a bit better is kerning. Of course, it is not the "best of all" fonts I saw, but it is good, and at many sizes, even small ones, and are nice to have, even more when we compare to other open/free font projects.

Amen to that.

Funny how you see the kerning being off and, my critical one, is the lowercase height being too tall. Too much spacing vs too tall. I use a lot of monospace and Serif fonts in my text editors so I don't notice extra kerning. I kind of prefer the extra kerning. To each their own.

Practically every letter on the screen is lowercase so, IMHO, that part of the font needs to be very consistent and easy to read. In that same thought, the lowercase letters shouldn't be taller than uppercase letters. That's just weird and can make things more difficult to read than necessary. Form over function instead of function over form.

It's not a bad looking font as far as being stylistic goes, but those same design choices make it less appealing to me. Some minor revisions could turn it into a decent font.

[woddy]

When I switched from Ubuntu to openSUSE 5 years ago, I missed the Ubuntu fonts, let's just say that they sucked on openSUSE, so something had to be changed every time to make them decent. But today my openSUSE has nice characters, I like the Noto, elegant and functional and now they have an excellent performance on openSUSE too.
All this to say that I'm not really interested in Ubuntu fonts anymore.

[Vistaus]

It is hard to find much to like about the font. It's not a terrible font-- it's certainly better than Times New Roman-- but the spacing between letters is pretty large and I would assume that a well-designed font could get by with *less* kerning.

I'm not really clear why existing fonts are deficient. It looks like Ubuntu last worked on fonts a little over 10 years ago (10.04?). Calibri / Segoe UI have been going strong for something like 17 years, and while Microsoft is talking about maybe replacing them at some point that's a ways off. Has there been some new revolution in font design or some major deficiency that makes this a reasonable use of resources?

Ways off? So you haven't heard how Calibri is replaced as the default font in MS Office? That's a big change, unless you want me to believe that MS Office is barely used anymore…

Also, I don't understand what age has to do with it. Apple and Google (macOS, iOS and Android resp.) have changed fonts more than once in the last 25 years, yet I don't see them losing any market share over it.

[franglais125]

it's the lower case U. It looks like the lower case V got drunk

Ugh, now I can't un-see it. That's horrible.

[franglais125]

This line is only to trigger us, right ? "This latest call for testing follows last week's soliciting for more Steam Snap testing. "

I thought the same. I'm not testing a walled garden for the benefit of a company.

Inb4, "Snap is open source" comments. No, it's a closed platform controlled by a for-profit organization.

[kn00tcn]

Nice! Even though most of my computers run versions of openSUSE, I always borrow the Ubuntu fonts from the lonely computer running Ubuntu linux.

why use an actual installation? you can just get the tar/deb directly https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fonts-ubuntu/

No sir, I don't like it.
~~bunch of issues~~

is that a ren & stimpy reference? arent those issues the same since the beginning? it's always been a trash font (however i'm currently looking at the existing chars on gfonts in a windows web browser)

serif is not good for legibility nor interfaces (citations and outliers needed, monospaced terminals/code often have serifs, sometimes as a hybrid font)

lowercase heights in general end up varying wildly at small sizes due to trying to align to pixels, i myself highly enjoy pixel-perfect fonts and so for example windows at >100% scale is just disgusting where every font and border gets thinner