Re: Font Problem

[Michael Ashton <data@ieee.org>]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2001 at 10:57:22PM -0500, David P James wrote:
> On Thursday 22 November 2001 22:42, Robert Tilley wrote:
> > I believe I've discovered the reason my fonts under KDE 2.2.2 have freaked
> > out.
> >
> > Many of my programs were set to use Helvetica for the font typeface.
> > Helvetica is no longer on my system.  How can I obtain the Helvetica font?
> > Is it part of the MS TT package?
> 
> No, but arial is, which is very similar. In fact, if for some reason you 

Ha.  Well, not really, not to us font buffs.  Personally, I hate
Arial, because it's such a cheap and shoddy imitation of the real
thing.  The only reason that it's risen to such prominence is because
way back when, Monotype gave Microsoft a deal on Arial, and a lot of
people don't seem to notice the difference between it and Helvetica.
One of the reasons I hate it so much, other than its poor design, is
that I know it's used just because it comes with Windows.  Makes me
mad.

> still have Windows you can find that font in c:\windows\fonts. A lot of 
> websites are set to use verdana and arial as well as helvetica, so it's 

I know.  It gets on my nerves something fierce.  I've got my system
set up to always substitute Helvetica whenever Arial is called for.
I just can't believe that anybody would actually _specify_ Arial for
something.

Verdana's all right though.  It's not a Helvetica clone; more of a
take on the various Gothics.  Looks a good bit like the typeface used
in many American telephone books.

I know you'll will think I'm weird for having a strong opinion on this,
and you're probably right, but I figure that _somebody_ ought to care
about this stuff :)

Personally, I'd like to see Univers become the sans-serif standard on
Linux.  That's _my_ favourite.  But Helvetica's OK too.

cheers
Michael Ashton <data@ieee.org>
----
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