Quote:
Originally Posted by anamardoll
Fellow Mobile Read Font Snobs, will you please help me?  |
I am NOT a font snob. Honestly. Not at all ;-).
But I will try to help you anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anamardoll
I'm trying to replace the stock font on the Sony PRS-950 via this guide, but I'm having trouble finding a good, free font that is:
1. Free.
2. Has at least 4 basic font styles. (normal, italic, bold, bold italic)
3. Is a sans serif font similar to Calibri or Candara.
Any and all help would be so very welcome. Thank you!  |
- Recently our fellow Mobilereader Farhad pointed out Ubuntu Font Family
http://font.ubuntu.com/ . I was sceptical at first, because some letters are quite unusual. Like 'r', 't', 'f'. The font is made by professional foundry and a lot of effort went to manually hinting the font. I am using it for reading ever since and it is *very* nicely balanced font. When I read, I like font that disappears. There mustn't be any irregularity, no funny characters, nothing that would draw my attention.
- on the above page there is link to the google.webfonts. They have lots of interesting fonts there. Some of them good enough for a font snob. Not that I am one ;-)
- Recently I have been reading in Ubuntu font, but my all time favourite is Gentium Book Basic. Again very nice font. I am not sure if you would call it sanserif, but have a look. You have to try it for reading for at least a couple of days.
- Droid font is also a nice choice. I am not sure if there are all four variants for sanserif. On serif Droid, serifs are nice and blocky, well suited to e-ink
Droid is free, but you have to look for it. It was developed by professional foundry and was paid for by Google. Google uses it as the main font for Android. It is well suited for displaying lots of info on a small screen. To me it looks a bit cramped, but ...
- have a look at Lexia Dama. Very, very similar to Caecilia on Kindle. Slabserif.
- many people here like Fontin. It is difficult to say whether it is serif or sanserif.
- You can also get fonts from your windows. Microsoft installs quite a few interesting high-quality fonts that are optimised for screen. They have enough money to pay for high quality fonts from a good foundry. They wrote book on Hinting and other things that might appeal to font snobs. If you do not have Vista or Windows 7, or the newest MSOffice you can download and install PowerPoint viewer (even under Wine) and it will install fonts. I am not sure if the use on your reader is kosher, but nobody is going to prosecute you.
- You can get fonts that are Linux alternatives to Windows fonts, like Linux libertine, dejavu sans, ...
Decent fonts, but nothing special IMHO.
One last observation.
To see if the font is good for reading on *your* e-ink device you have to test it on that device. I acquired ;-) many fonts - I still have contacts in publishing / graphics companies and my friends have access to nice fonts. Some fonts that look gorgeous on paper (or even on other readers) look bad on my reader. It might be caused by hinting info that is not used correctly by software in my reader, it might be caused by fact that the font is optimised for printing and not a low-res screen. Other fonts that I have tried look much better on my e-ink than anywhere else.