Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
I'm sure none of my 100s of pre 1940s hardback books use Verdana or Georgia. I doubt any of the older paperbacks do either. 
Georgia is from 1993 and is like Times New Roman designed for lower DPI screens, but perhaps works better than Times New Roman for 150 dpi or more.
Though old printing can't easily do even 200 dpi for images, you need 600 dpi to 1200 dpi on digital printing to get mechanical print quality. The eink is different from both laser (more shades) and CRT/LCD/Plasma/OLED (dramatically less shades). Addressed per dot colour screens can do subpixel addressing which works because our eyes are poorer at colour than mono resolution (thus we don't see blue and red edges) and western fonts look better with increased horizontal resolution. But it doesn't work except for monochrome high contrast text and if DPI is too low you see the fringing. If there is higher than normal DPI you don't need it. Hence HIDPI/Retina mode should have it off as if you using a CRT or eink. |
FWIW, I have a lot of older, sometimes collectible, sometimes not, printed books. For example, of all the cursed things, not only a very odd old set of Dickens, but the "Maida's Little Yadda books," as well. And that eclectic sort of thing. Some of my oldest books are the best. The Dickens was printed century before last, the 1900's and it's in great shape. The Maidas are hanging on by a thread, really. I mean...not literally but
close. Those are the 30's-40's. Gosh, I guess 80-90 years ago now. I should be pleasantly surprised that they are still with us!
BUT the type...the type survives and thrives. They are very readable, all of them. (The type size on that older Dickens, yowzers, that's a bit hard on ye olden peepers, but I can still barely manage. TG for Kindles.)
Hitch