topological-modular-forms/Darwin-Typeface

Provide slide fonts

Opened this issue · 2 comments

permeakra commented

Slide fonts have several specific requirements different from fonts for papers and books, namely

  1. They do not need to support fast reading. Thus, some irregularities breaking perceived line shape are acceptable.
  2. They require enhanced legibility, thus glyphs must have clearly distinct shapes even at cost of breaking line shape and uniformity of style of the typeface.
  3. Ideally, they should support adjustable 'irregularity', imitating writing on a whiteboard. A possible implementation is a small semi-random adjustment to individual glyph position and orientation in the bounding box.
topological-modular-forms commented

This is a really great suggestion, thank you very much!

Although having an additional handwritten family for Darwin is something I'd have to think more about before committing myself to, I'll definitely keep optimisations for slides in mind; this is really a very good and important use case I should have in mind while designing the fonts for the project (and while writing the LaTeX package for Darwin, too).

permeakra commented

A proper handwriting (as in imitating any fast pen-writing hand) font is not something I would be concerned with in a general-purpose type family. In handwriting letterforms and metrics are context-dependent, so its a LOT of work. On another hand, when impression of handwriting or especially fancy calligraphy is important, it is best done manually in a graphics editor.
There are, however, simplification like Grundschrift and the well-established standard for technical lettering. Letterforms for the latter can be found, for example, here https://ru-wikisource-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%93%D0%9E%D0%A1%D0%A2_2.304%E2%80%9481?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

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