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Comment by varispeed

14 hours ago

I wonder when we reach the state of having a perfect font.

There are people who don't want a perfect font, they want a new one every few years.

The rest of us just don't want it to be distracting.

I've just been collecting monospace fonts, and have a bit of elisp to cycle through the collection when I'm bored with the current one. (Sometimes that's enough to conclude that no, really, the original was fine and I go back to it :-)

> I wonder when we reach the state of having a perfect font.

"Perfect font" can only happen when we stop developing new display technologies, and print dies out completely. If "perfect" is not subjective in the first place, it is definitely context-dependent. Fonts designed to work on budget smartphone displays don't necessarily look good on 6K desktop displays, and so on...

That's like reaching the state of having a perfect button-down shirt.

Styles change (like collar size, slim vs roomy), and what looks good on one torso doesn't look best on another. What fits well for one company/product/book doesn't fit well for another company/product/book.

that reminds me of the time there was one particular combination of my laptop dpi, screen resolution, and windows 2000 font renderer that made lucida sans typewriter look perfect, but when I switched to linux the same font seemed less crisp and clean, and I ended up using bitstream vera instead. I still try lucida sans typewriter out every now and then but whatever sweet spot it hit on that machine never happened again.

define perfect!

- read? mostly coders

- sell? mostly marketing

- fraud? rn.com vs m.com mostly designers