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Re: [zigzag] Fonts



> I like the idea of billowing text, it has the potential to maintain
> readability while looking at a large body of text.  Implied by
> billowing text is the elimination of the necessity of specifing
> a font size.  Which is great.  One feature of billowing text is gets
> smaller as you get away from the section you are currently reader.
> Eventually, the text gets so small that it can't be read.  The font
> type could be tuned to increase the readability of the smaller text,
> up to a point, by perhaps the elimination of serifs.

Probably simple antialiasing will do more than serif elimination,
without changing the type. And another point is that moving should
be so simple so that if you want to see something you just move there.

> A book called "The Design Book for Non-Designers" by Robin Williams (not
> the actor) sums up how best to use fonts.

It's a great book, I have it.

[font families]
> A seventh family would be monospaced fonts such as Courier.
> 
> Personally, I don't see any point providing a user any more than one font
> type in any particular font family except for the optional ugly family.
> The decoration family probably shouldn't be included in floating world.
> Monospaced fonts would be provided only for legacy purposes.

Well, I'm all for flexibility for the user: if the user really *wants*
he can specify whatever he wants. But a common level of abstraction,
just as offered by Java (serif/sansserif/monospace) is a good idea.

> It would be neat if an applitude could take a body of text, and apply
> proven graphic design solutions to it that improve the readability of 
> the text.

Most likely something like this will be done. 

	Tuomas