Arne Götje (高盛華) wrote:
IMHO the following needs to be done:
1. classify the available fonts into "Decorative" and "Desktop" fonts. With "Decorative" I mean fonts, which are nice for *printing*, "Desktop" refers to fonts which are suitable for *screen* display. Example for Decorative fonts: AR PL ZenKai family, this is a brushstroke CJK font, which is nice for printing documents, but horrible for screen display. Example for Desktop fonts: DejaVu sans. It's a smart font and a very simple stroked font, makes it perfect for screen display... no issues with hinting and so on...
"Decorative" already has a pretty specific usage as far as fonts are concerned - which I think is slightly different from what you are talking about. Anyway, to avoid confusion, I'd use another name (? "Typographical" or "Print Fonts") rather than "Decorative" for fonts which are nice for printing running or body text. Keep "Decorative" for fancy decorative display faces used in things like headlines and advertising.
I'm also not quite clear where the division between the two types of fonts is.Some fonts are also perfectly OK for screen display and printing when you are doing word processing or in web pages - provided the font size is sufficiently large. These may even be preferable for screen display when working in applications. But with some scripts you definitely do need something else for the GUI (menus etc) where font size is very constrained and legibility is the primary concern.
- Chris