Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by IggleSniggle 2372 days ago
Yeah okay, but the initial suggestion (just specify "sans serif") still holds. Or really, if we're talking about a webpage to last, why do we even care about what font is being used? If you care enough about a font that the glyphs used are important for layout, then obviously you're going to need to include the font. If the specific look of the page is essential to the content conveyed, it seems likely to me you won't be using a standard font anyway.

For typical "the words matter more than how the words look" content...can someone explain to me why we care about including the font?
1 comments
strenholme 2372 days ago
There is another thread in this discussion where we discuss this, pointing out that default fonts in browsers tend to be quite ugly.

See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21841011

There’s also layout issues caused when replacing a font with another font, unless the metrics are precisely duplicated. There’s a reason RedHat paid a lot of money to have Liberation Sans with the exact same metrics as Arial, Liberation Serif have the same metrics as Times New Roman, and Liberation Mono have the same metrics as Courier New.

link