Re: Fonts are a big concern for Debian, IMHO

[Jarno Elonen <elonen@iki.fi>]

> Try some. The problem is that they usually look good only in large sizes
> with antialias. Good scalability is not very common in freeware fonts. And
> they often contain only a very limited set of characters.
> In my opinion, apart from quality issues, making sure the font(s) are
> freely modifiable (i.e. "free", not just "gratis") would be important, too.

Several people sent me links to web pages with free fonts as a response to 
this. My point was not that there are no free fonts around, but that their 
quality is usually not sufficient for a basic GUI font.

So here's the challenge restated.
Find free fonts that:

 + is compact and suitable for a GUI (say, menus and a file browser)
 + looks good and is easy to read
   + in sizes 7-12 without antialiasing
   + in sizes 5- with antialiasing
 + has both upper and lower case characters
 + has scandinavian and french characters, euro sign, mathematical
   characters etc.
 (+ is really free and you can even distribute modified versions)

Good examples, except that they are not free, are Windows fonts Microsoft Sans 
Serif, Courier New and Times New Roman. The free Verdana is unfortunately too 
wide for GUI use, IMO.

- Jarno