What font(s) do you like?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hypernova

I tried DejaVu Serif(and condensed) and Fontin. They are definitely more "readable" in the sense that if I have to spell each word, it would be easier. However, for some reason I found Constantia looks better in the sense that it "disappeared", so that is my choice for now.

Caecilia is not free, right?

One thing I rather like about Fontin is that it has serif and sans-serif versions. That means that for headers I can use the sans-serif and it looks quite good because of the way everything matches.

[radius]

Originally Posted by cerement

Then there's always the classics of Myriad Web and Minion Web from Adobe, designed for viewing on screen, paired serif and sans-serif.

Another vote here for Minion Web and Myriad Web... I think they look great.

I'm surprised at the amount of love for Droid Serif and Constantia though.

I find that Droid is clear for short pieces of text, but the letters are squared off a bit instead of being more rounded rounded and there is too much resemblance between letters. This means that for large blocks of text, you get almost a graph paper effect. Also the x-height is quite high, and that means you need to space out the lines more than I like.

I tried Constantia for a few months as an improvement over the stock ADE font (which I find a bit condensed for my taste). After a while I started finding that the letter forms are a bit "spiky" for my taste. I think because the serifs are more prominent and sharper.

I recommend trying out the Adobe pair of fonts (Minion and Myriad are serif and sans, and Web is the computer-display version of the fonts). They are installed with Adobe Reader (look inside the Adobe Reader program folder), but beware that they don't display that well on Windows because they didn't seem to hand-tune to force fit the letters into a pixel grid the way many Windows fonts do...

[JSWolf]

I[m trying to find a good sans-serif font. Anyone have any recomendations? Has to have regular, bold, italic, and bold-italic.

[Lemurion]

I'm another pro-serif font person. Fonts like Arial make things almost unreadable for me. I can read a little in Arial, but after a couple of pages I start wanting a serif font.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

I'm another pro-serif font person. Fonts like Arial make things almost unreadable for me. I can read a little in Arial, but after a couple of pages I start wanting a serif font.

I'm looking for a good sans-serif font for things like chapter titles. I too prefer serif to read with. But I do feel that headers and chapter titles should be sans-serif.

[Elfwreck]

I love Fontin, and it has a sans version.
Fontin: http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/fontin.html
Fontin sans: http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/fontinsans.html

When I'm working with in in Word, I compress it by .1 point.

Just ignore this; I hadn't read back to the beginning to realize it's already been mentioned.

[Coops]

Just had a go with some fonts for my PRS-505... have a text version of Atlas Shrugged, and it's easy to print to PDF on my Macbook.

Used Word with page setup at 9.1cm x 12.3cm and formatting was with Paragraph spacing of 2pts after each paragraph, and First line (of para) indent of 0.5cm - worked a treat.... tried out several different fonts and font sizes (pdf's are good for this, but the option to increase the font on the reader is not any use with PDF really.. but once i've got the size i like then, it's a good option for me for any other txt files - and for epubs...)

At moment really liked the Gill Sans font. It looks good both on a laptop and on the reader. Has a nice weight/darkness to it and is very clear (to me).
Font size of 9 was good, but a little too small for everyday use for my eyes (need to re-zap my right eye - had it PRK lasered ~ 20 years ago, better tech should be able to remove my astigmatism..), at 10 it's very nice indeed.

I'm going to setup my Word templates with Gill Sans.... enough with the default Arial ;-)

And maybe Verdana for Headings....

Coops

[cidrolin]

I love the good-old faschioned BT Charter wich looks very good on low-res devices:



but no small-caps !


Fontin is really beautiful and have real small caps...



But, but... maybe too funny for "serious" texts.


I regulary use kp-fonts :



and there are : serif, sans-serif, typewriter, italic, bold, bold italic, bold extend, a full bunch of ligatures, small-caps, bold smallcaps, slanted small caps, mathematical symbol... everything you need I think.

In summary, I only know TWO free fonts with real small caps : Fontin and kp-fonts. Do you know others ?

[frabjous]

Yes, I do!

I try as much as possible to use free fonts. (Both in terms of free beer, and free speech.)

I like kp-fonts a lot but I have a few gripes about it: (i) as far as I know, it's Type 1 only, which is great for LaTeX and PDFs, but not for embedding in webpages or ePubs, (ii) it's really pretty similar to Palatino.

Lately my favorite has been the Linux Libertine series:



This is a very attractive font for printed text. Yes it has a true small cap.



For e-reading, however, it has a sister font I like to use called "Linux Biolinum", which actually reminds me a lot of Fontin, but overall I find it more subtle. The "fanciness" of Fontin gets to me after awhile.



That's quite beautiful.

As their names imply, these are open source, GPL-licensed fonts, and are available in type 1, and true type, and open type (with some opentype glyph variants you can use in Xe(La)TeX.

And no, you don't have to use linux to use the font, though it helps...

Homepage for project:
http://linuxlibertine.sourceforge.net/

[cidrolin]

Originally Posted by frabjous

Yes, I do!

Lately my favorite has been the Linux Libertine series:

Thanks a lot, I think it worth a try !

[Jack Tingle]

For reading on paper or high resolution displays: Palatino and Optima.
For reading on medium resolution displays: Times New Roman[1] and Verdana
For reading on low resolution displays: Verdana

[1] More for its universality, rather than for its beauty.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

[LDBoblo]

Lots of fonts work reasonably well if properly set with appropriate width and kerning and leading.

I have lot of good commercial fonts that I use, and prefer them to all the freebies I've tried. However, if you're crazy enough to set them at 12pt or larger, I don't think there's much of an issue with any common font in Latin languages. I set most of my files at 8-9pt, and so most standard fonts I dig up are a bit lacking.

Adobe's opticals are pretty good at those small sizes on low-quality screens like e-ink since there is a caption size that has lower line contrast and slightly heavier setting than standard, without being a "medium" or "bold" font. Some fabulous print fonts don't do so well on e-ink (Jenson, Warnock, Minion), but others fare alright (Garamond, Arno, Chaparral).

Another pretty good font for small sizes is Karmina. Scala works well at 9pt or more, and Scala Sans is my go-to sans, though I only use sans for shorter documents or headings and such.

Another capable font is ITC Mendoza Roman. Seems to play well at moderately small sizes, but it sometimes needs tweaking. I've only used it for one book so far, and it rarely jumps out at me as a dominant choice.

I've played with PMN Caecilia and while it's OK, I think it benefits from a lot of leading and a touch of condensing. It's just a bit too broad, and whenever I try to use it, I end up using Chaparral Pro Caption instead.

There are lots of others that seem decent that I just don't use or don't have. Quadraat, Dolly, Milo Serif, etc. etc. etc.

Looking at books that I have done for myself, the most common typefaces I use for ebook reader body text are Karmina and Chaparral Pro Caption, then Garamond Pro Caption and Arno Pro Caption, then Scala.

[radius]

Originally Posted by frabjous

For e-reading, however, it has a sister font I like to use called "Linux Biolinum", which actually reminds me a lot of Fontin, but overall I find it more subtle. The "fanciness" of Fontin gets to me after awhile.

I haven't tried it out, but Biolinum looks too subtle to show to best advantage on a current e-ink screen unless used at very large size. Wouldn't all the uprights become just plain, straight lines in the reader at typical sizes?

Looks great in your sample though.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm looking for a good sans-serif font for things like chapter titles. I too prefer serif to read with. But I do feel that headers and chapter titles should be sans-serif.

Another vote for reading with a serif font (I prefer 14 point Georgia). San-serif is okay for short passages, but serif is definitely easier to read for long passages.

I also agree with using a san-serif font (I prefer 16 point and 18 point Century Gothic) for special text (like chapter header, titles, and so on). This makes it easier to visually distinguish it from the main text, and to me it looks better than having everything in a serif typeface.

Finally, I prefer a fixed-font (I prefer 14 point Cumberland) for non-story text (like an author's comments and other text that stands apart from the story). Like with special text, this makes it easy to tell when an author steps outside of the story to speak directly with the reader.

[pepak]

Fontin is great, but unfortunately doesn't jhave some characters that I need. So I use Gentium instead (also a nice font). For monospace, I prefer Droid Sans Mono. I am still looking for a nice sans-serif font - I am using Droid Sans ATM, but I am not too happy with it.