On 2014-04-08, 12:33 PM, Martijn Hoekstra wrote:
That is not the status quo, but the diff between the Odder patch and the typography refresh basically is the "Set a non-free font stack to give Mac now Helvetica Neue rather than Helvetica", with a -2 is planted in the ground before as a demarcation line. That's the point that I don't think is worth having a non-free font-stack for, and that I certainly think standing your ground for the brave new world of typography refresh is constructive for.
Just to randomly chime in here, as someone using a Mac bought for my personal use by my employer awhile ago in my daily activities, I'd prefer that the difference between Helvetica and Helvetica Neue is not belittled.
Helvetica is an ancient font, created for print in 1957. Helvetica Neue was still only created in 1983 but its goal of being an improvement over Helvetica still carries over to the current computer fonts nonetheless. I can't fathom why Helvetica is still in use when a variant created specifically to be more legible than base Helvetica is now available – some would say any variant of Helvetica doesn't belong on the web[1], but Neue is still an improvement.
Flipping between Helvetica and Helvetica Neue by turning on and off a font-face: sans-serif; overriding the current `"Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif` on en.wp's main page I can see a notable difference between the two.
Primarily in the kerning, Helvetica Neue's kerning is much better than Helvetica's, which simultaneously leaves extra space between letters when not needed and uses too little space between letters when it's necessary for legibility.
In general Neue has better kerning between letters, putting things closer together: - In "Main Page" it drops the unnecessary space inside Pa that Helvetica has. - In "Main page" in the sidebar it puts all letters closer together, dropping unnecessary space between ai and ag - In the content "All" drops unnecessary space between ll and "The" drops unnecessary space between Th - and so on
While in other cases Neue separates things that Helvetica puts together to it's detriment: cl, co, ct, te, all have extra space between them, while Helvetica puts them close together in ways that could be mistaken for other letters (d, oo, d, b).
[1] http://www.64notes.com/design/stop-helvetica-arial/
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]