rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (03/16/91)
OK, I grant that the subject line will hit many of you as a world-class stupid question. Let me explain. It is well known (regardless of whether it's true) that Courier is one of the ugliest fonts in the history of Western Civilization (such as it is). In particular, it's regarded as ugly even within the limited context of being a fixed-pitch font, which is a tough constraint on font design. What I'd like to get is some consensus of _why_ it's considered so ugly. What specific features offend the most, or cause the most problem in reading it? What would you fix, again within the constraint of fixed width? (I have my own list; I want to collect other folks' reasons into something more global.) If you just have some short reasons and would rather email, I'll collect them and summarize. (Oh...and if you think Courier _isn't_ ugly, that's OK...please speak up; we could use a laugh.:-) -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...Relax...don't worry...have a homebrew.
tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) (03/17/91)
Courier is ugly because it is too plain for a text font and too spindly and serif-y for a line printer font. Its origins lie in the exigencies of making a cheap mechanical typewriter do its job adequately through six carbons and seven owners. Nothing about it is a "natural" for computer use -- it's just there out of a sort of grandfather clause.
preston@lll-crg.llnl.gov (David R Preston) (03/18/91)
That's an easy one. It looks like a sans-serif font with serifs
tacked on. I don't know the technical terms to discuss fonts, but
the lines and curves are all the same width. Totally monotonous.
Also, the overall weight (or do I mean "color") is too light.
However, if the purpose of using it is to set off something as
being different (like including some code in a paper set in a
normal font), it's definitely different. When I fill out the survey
in the current _Font and Function_, I'm going to answer "good-looking
monospace font" to the "what typefaces would you like to see added
to Adobe's library?" question. I think a monospaced Optima would be
reasonable for code listing. Or maybe mono Lucida or Clearface.
-david
preston@lll-crg.llnl.gov
[the United States has] "no opinion on your border
dispute with Kuwait" - U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie, July, 1990
D. R. Preston 584 Castro St. #614 SF CA 94114 USAspworley@athena.mit.edu (Spaceman Spiff) (03/18/91)
The serifs on Courier are also non-tapered; they maintain the same width as the body of each character. I agree that they look "tacked-on." Because the lines in each character in Courier are so thin, I find that medium to low resolution representations (300 dpi and lower) are especially unaesthetic. Compare a very high resolution Courier to a screen font version to see what I mean. About the only big use I've seen for Courier is for "computer output" or "user input" in computer manuals and documentation. I immediately associate it with output from programs, and this is a very useful when a manual is trying to distinguish output from comments in the manual text. You can see this in the \TeX manual, the GNU Emacs manual, and many, many other types of computer documentation. -Steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Steve Worley spworley@athena.mit.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sanglee@gandalf.Berkeley.EDU (Sang-Ho Lee) (03/18/91)
Several people mentioned how "thin" Courier is, but maybe it depends on whose version of Courier one is looking at? I know that the LaserWriter I use produces very thin Courier, but on the other hand, I am holding the book "The UNIX Progamming Environment" by Kernighan and Pike, which says, "This book was typeset in Times and Courier by the authors,...". Its Courier is definitely not thin at all. Or perhaps the PostScript Courier has trouble properly scaling the stroke thickness at large sizes.
les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) (03/19/91)
In article <41361@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> sanglee@gandalf.Berkeley.EDU (Sang-Ho Lee) writes: >Several people mentioned how "thin" Courier is, but maybe it depends on whose >version of Courier one is looking at? Yes, we have some NEC 890's and an HP IIID w/HP's postscript cartridge. On the NEC's, Courier comes out looking about like normal typerwriter text but on the HP it is so thin it is almost unreadable. (On the other hand, everything else looks better from the HP). I really miss having Letter Gothic, though. Years of generating text from Diablo daisy-wheel printers and software that couldn't allign the proportional fonts have left me with the feeling that Letter Gothic is the best font for casual text (correspondence, etc.). Also, I wish that the built-in postscript fonts had built-in variants with slashed zeros. I know that this is trivial to arrange in native postscript, but it is not trivial to arrange for all your applications to do it, so unless you have a post-processing step you end up with confusing output. Les Mikesell les@chinet.chi.il.us
landers@zeus.mgmt.purdue.edu (Chris Landers) (03/19/91)
In article <1991Mar15.225317.13890@ico.isc.com> rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes: > >It is well known (regardless of whether it's true) that Courier is one of >the ugliest fonts in the history of Western Civilization (such as it is). I'm sorry, but that honor must go to Letter Gothic, especially as reproduced on a WANG laser printer ;-) >What I'd like to get is some consensus of _why_ it's considered so ugly. I don't think Courier is ugly, it's just boring, and seen too often. -- <================================><===============================> || Christopher Landers || PURDUE UNIVERSITY - KRAN 708 || || Krannert Computing Center || West Lafayette, IN 47907 || <=================== landers@zeus.mgmt.purdue.edu ================>
anton@chinet.chi.il.us (Borowiec Andrzej) (03/19/91)
If Courier was invented by the same guy who gave us Qwerty keyboard layout it would explain a lot. Andrzej Borowiec <anton@chinet.chi.il.us> .
samurai@cs.mcgill.ca (Darcy BROCKBANK) (03/19/91)
I dunno... I kinda like it :) - db
zombie@voodoo.UUCP (Mike York) (03/20/91)
In article <1991Mar19.011328.16296@zeus.mgmt.purdue.edu> landers@zeus.mgmt.purdue.edu (Chris Landers) writes: >In article <1991Mar15.225317.13890@ico.isc.com> rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes: >>It is well known (regardless of whether it's true) that Courier is one of >>the ugliest fonts in the history of Western Civilization (such as it is). >I'm sorry, but that honor must go to Letter Gothic, especially as reproduced >on a WANG laser printer ;-) I'm sorry, you're both wrong. OCRB is the ugliest, most hideous, disgusting font in the history of the universe. ;^) Unfortunately, the Air Transport Association dictates that manuals for airplanes be printed with "a sans-serif monospaced font" which is generally interpreted as OCRB. So that's what we use in our manuals. What I wouldn't give to use Courier for text paragraphs and Helvetica for illustrations... -- Mike York | "Lord help me, I'm just not Boeing Computer Services | that bright." (206) 865-6577 | zombie@voodoo.boeing.com | -Homer Simpson
evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) (03/20/91)
In article <1991Mar15.225317.13890@ico.isc.com> rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes: >It is well known (regardless of whether it's true) that Courier is one of >the ugliest fonts in the history of Western Civilization (such as it is). >In particular, it's regarded as ugly even within the limited context of >being a fixed-pitch font, which is a tough constraint on font design. > >What I'd like to get is some consensus of _why_ it's considered so ugly. First, as you suggest, the constrait of being designed for fixed-pitch is a good cause of the ugliness in itself. Propotionally spaced type just looks more ... natural. Look at the letter 'i' in Courier, it seems as if the letter's serifs are stretched out of proportion to prevent too mucg white space floating around the letter in fixed pitch. I haven't seen any studies, but my instinct tells me that fixed pitch Courier is harder on the eye than classic body types like Times or Bookman. Another problem is in the stroke weights. There's no variation, no thin and thick lines, everything's the same. Boring. On a sans-serif type like Avant Garde or Univers, you can get away with it, but only as a display font -- would you ever want to read a book whose body type was set in Avant Garde? Uniform stroke weights on serif fonts just don't seem to work well. There are a few such fonts, such as Egyptian (I think), but they only work for their novelty value, which means they need to be used sparingly at best. The biggest problem, though, is that it's so ubiquitous - It's the only font you can produce on just about every typewriter, daisy wheel, LQ dot matrix and laser printer ever built. It's too common. In client sites where I've upgraded their printers with Postscript cartidges, the main oohs and aahs come not from fancy graphics, shading, or scalable fonts... it's the ability to do business letters in a proportional font without the bother of downloaded fonts. -- Evan Leibovitch, Sound Software, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evan / (416) 452-0504 Vanilla Ice is a few cubes short of a full tray...
preston@lll-crg.llnl.gov (David R Preston) (03/20/91)
In article <1133@voodoo.UUCP> zombie@voodoo.UUCP (Mike York) writes: >Unfortunately, the Air Transport Association dictates that manuals for >airplanes be printed with "a sans-serif monospaced font" which is generally >interpreted as OCRB. So that's what we use in our manuals. What I wouldn't >give to use Courier for text paragraphs and Helvetica for illustrations... Bitstream has a monospaced Helvetica (at least, it's listed in their catalog, 10/89 printing). -david preston@lll-crg.llnl.gov [the United States has] "no opinion on your border dispute with Kuwait" - U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie, July, 1990 D. R. Preston 584 Castro St. #614 SF CA 94114 USA
cet1@cl.cam.ac.uk (C.E. Thompson) (03/21/91)
In article <41361@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> sanglee@gandalf.Berkeley.EDU (Sang-Ho Lee) writes: >Several people mentioned how "thin" Courier is, but maybe it depends on whose >version of Courier one is looking at? I know that the LaserWriter I use >produces very thin Courier, but on the other hand, I am holding the book >"The UNIX Progamming Environment" by Kernighan and Pike, which says, >"This book was typeset in Times and Courier by the authors,...". Its Courier >is definitely not thin at all. Or perhaps the PostScript Courier has >trouble properly scaling the stroke thickness at large sizes. The reason that Adobe's "Courier" is so light is surely that they have set themselves the requirement to have a "Courier-Bold" with the same spacing? Chris Thompson JANET: cet1@uk.ac.cam.phx Internet: cet1%phx.cam.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
gilbertd@p4.cs.man.ac.uk (Dave Gilbert) (03/21/91)
In article <1991Mar15.225317.13890@ico.isc.com> rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes: > >It is well known (regardless of whether it's true) that Courier is one of >the ugliest fonts in the history of Western Civilization (such as it is). >What I'd like to get is some consensus of _why_ it's considered so ugly. 1) I think Courier is a non-proportionaly spaced font - thus I has the same space as W - which looks pretty bad - as fonts go. 2) Consider the laser printer manufacturers - they supply the machines with bad fonts - that way they have a good chance of other people buying better fonts - I wouldn't put this past printer manufacturers! 3) Its been around for a long time - better stuff has appeared, but you've got to keep courier since things might just use it. Dave Gilbert -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Dave Gilbert - gilbertd@p4.cs.man.ac.uk - The MTBF of a piece of equipment - - G7FHJ@GB7NWP - is inversly proportional to its - ------------------------------------------- importance -
geoff@pmafire.inel.gov (Geoff Allen) (03/21/91)
Taking comp.lang.postscript out of the distribution, since this doesn't really concern postscript.... evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes: >Another problem is in the stroke weights. There's no variation, no thin >and thick lines, everything's the same. Boring. On a sans-serif type >like Avant Garde or Univers, you can get away with it, but only as a >display font -- would you ever want to read a book whose body type was set >in Avant Garde? As a matter of fact, I have recently been reading a book set in a sans-serif typeface. The book itself is good, but it's very annoyong and hard to read. I want to grab the publisher by the throat as I'm reading! It strains the eyes to read it. You don't realize how nice serifs are in helping to understand what you're reading until you have to do without them. (This book is also set with lots of leading, so the page has lots of white space -- too much. But that's another story. :^) ) -- Geoff Allen \ The good thing about standards is there uunet!pmafire!geoff \ are so many to choose from. geoff@pmafire.inel.gov \ -- Jean-Louis Gassee
kevinc@cs.athabascau.ca (Kevin Crocker) (03/22/91)
geoff@pmafire.inel.gov (Geoff Allen) writes: >As a matter of fact, I have recently been reading a book set in a >sans-serif typeface. The book itself is good, but it's very annoyong >and hard to read. I want to grab the publisher by the throat as I'm >reading! It strains the eyes to read it. You don't realize how nice >serifs are in helping to understand what you're reading until you have >to do without them. Geoff, you have no idea how difficult it is for those of us with vision problems -- all that serif type in itsy-bitsy point sizes that just is one big grey blurr. Some people, like myself, actually like san-serif typefaces because they allow me to tell the difference between letters better. some of us also like bigger point sizes. I guess I should put a caveat in all this: I usually print in avant-garde 14 and 18 point on a LW+ just to be able to see it. I can't stand times-roman: for me it is completely unreadable. I have foudn that I need a large x-height and a heavy stroke to be able to read things. BTW, does anyone have any suggestions for a good MS-WINDOWs 3.0 font that has a large x-height and a heavy stroke that I could install??? Kevin -- Kevin "auric" Crocker Athabasca University UUCP: ...!{alberta,ncc}!atha!kevinc Inet: kevinc@cs.AthabascaU.CA
briand@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Brian D Diehm) (03/23/91)
In article <1991Mar21.154413.19923@pmafire.inel.gov> geoff@pmafire.inel.gov (Geoff Allen) writes: >Taking comp.lang.postscript out of the distribution, since this doesn't >really concern postscript.... > >evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes: >>Another problem is in the stroke weights. There's no variation, no thin >>and thick lines, everything's the same. Boring. On a sans-serif type >>like Avant Garde or Univers, you can get away with it, but only as a >>display font -- would you ever want to read a book whose body type was set >>in Avant Garde? > >As a matter of fact, I have recently been reading a book set in a >sans-serif typeface. The book itself is good, but it's very annoyong >and hard to read. I want to grab the publisher by the throat as I'm >reading! It strains the eyes to read it. You don't realize how nice >serifs are in helping to understand what you're reading until you have >to do without them. > >(This book is also set with lots of leading, so the page has lots of >white space -- too much. But that's another story. :^) ) Actually, what you are complaining about is poor typography rather than sans serif typefaces. Studies have shown that in the US serif faces are "easier" to read. However, over recent decades the balance has been moving away from a serif preference toward neutrality. In some European countries, notably scandanavia, there is NO difference in comprehension or speed between the two styles, and even a benefit to sans serif has been reported. The conclusion is inescapable: this is a culturally-based characteristic. The extreme response which you have shown in your sans serif reading response is not necessarily typical. You have probably read many many pieces set in sans serif faces without being aware of it at all. The fact that this raised itself above your subconscious indicates there is a typographic problem with the piece you mention. I can't tell for certain without looking at it, of course. I have found that sans serif faces are, in general, very susceptible to becoming difficult to read when they are loosly track kerned - that is, spaced out horizontally. In these cases, I think that serifs aid comprehension. On the other hand, sans serif typefaces when tightly kerned are easily read. (As with all rules of thumb, this one has exceptions.) Since you mention that the book is loosely kerned, it indicates a stylistic attempt to make a "light" page, and thus they may also have erred on the side of too much horizontal space as well. Is this the case? The final comment about all this is that designers need to remember that form follows function. Remember the Bauhaus? (Neither do I, I was born too late!) People do cutesy design and forget that readability is paramount. That's too bad; cutesy (or dramatic, or elegant, or whimsical, or innovative) design CAN be done within the constraints of legibility. When it isn't, as is apparently the case with the book mentioned, I think it is fair game to take the designer by the throat - well, figuratively, anyway. The point of this long ramble is: don't assume the problems are due to the lack of serifs; there are also plenty of other likely causes for your eye- strain. -- -Brian Diehm Tektronix, Inc. (503) 627-3437 briand@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM P.O. Box 500, M/S 47-780 Beaverton, OR 97077 (SDA - Standard Disclaimers Apply)
gasior@khazad-dum.rutgers.edu (Eric Gasior) (03/23/91)
evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes: >In article <1991Mar15.225317.13890@ico.isc.com> rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes: >First, as you suggest, the constrait of being designed for fixed-pitch >is a good cause of the ugliness in itself. Propotionally spaced type Wrong. My local printer is an old daisy wheel, and some of the monospaced print wheels are rather pleasant. Prestige Elite and Prestige Pica hold up well over 10 pages. My current wheel (I can't remember the typestyle) is also decent, even if the letters are a little small for 12 cpi. ... >The biggest problem, though, is that it's so ubiquitous - It's the only >font you can produce on just about every typewriter, daisy wheel, LQ dot >matrix and laser printer ever built. It's too common. In client sites >where I've upgraded their printers with Postscript cartidges, the main >oohs and aahs come not from fancy graphics, shading, or scalable >fonts... it's the ability to do business letters in a proportional font >without the bother of downloaded fonts. Ubiquitous? I've never seen a courrier wheel for my printer, and the Selectrics I've seen generally don't have it either. Not all monospaced fonts look alike, or as bad as courrier. I wonder why HP chose it. Courrier has strange serifs. It's the only monospaced font that I know where the bases of the 'i' and 'l' run for most of the character's allotted space. (BTW The Laser Writer's courrier is different from HP's.) EDG
preston@lll-crg.llnl.gov (David R Preston) (03/23/91)
In article <1991Mar20.171526.27975@cl.cam.ac.uk> cet1@cl.cam.ac.uk (C.E. Thompson) writes: >The reason that Adobe's "Courier" is so light is surely that they have set >themselves the requirement to have a "Courier-Bold" with the same spacing? Perhaps, it's certainly lighter than the courier built-in to the HP Deskjet+. preston@lll-crg.llnl.gov [the United States has] "no opinion on your border dispute with Kuwait" - U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie, July, 1990 D. R. Preston 584 Castro St. #614 SF CA 94114 USA
zombie@voodoo.UUCP (Mike York) (03/23/91)
In article <93559@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> preston@lll-crg.llnl.gov (David R Preston) writes: >In article <1133@voodoo.UUCP> zombie@voodoo.UUCP (That's Me) writes: >>Unfortunately, the Air Transport Association dictates that manuals for >>airplanes be printed with "a sans-serif monospaced font" which is generally >>interpreted as OCRB. So that's what we use in our manuals. What I wouldn't >>give to use Courier for text paragraphs and Helvetica for illustrations... > >Bitstream has a monospaced Helvetica (at least, it's listed in their >catalog, 10/89 printing). Ah, you've hit on an interesting point. One of my co-workers recently whipped up a proportional OCRB font for some testing that had to be done. It looks much better than monospaced OCRB -- everything seems much more "balanced" especially the "i", "l" and "L". We got the impression that OCRB was originally meant to be monospaced ;^). I would imagine that a monospaced Helvetica would show many of the same problems as OCRB, but then again, I haven't seen a monospaced helvetica. -- Mike York | "Lord help me, I'm just not Boeing Computer Services | that bright." (206) 865-6577 | zombie@voodoo.boeing.com | -Homer Simpson
rjv@hp-vcd.HP.COM (Ron Vaughn) (03/26/91)
>2) Consider the laser printer manufacturers - they supply the machines with >bad fonts - that way they have a good chance of other people buying better >fonts - I wouldn't put this past printer manufacturers! >Dave Gilbert you would be SHOCKED at the high number of people hours that HP, as a printer manufacturer, puts into improving/maintaining the quality of their fonts. i can't speak for other vendors. rjv
jlister@slhisc.uucp (John Lister) (03/27/91)
In article <Mar.22.16.01.27.1991.855@khazad-dum.rutgers.edu> gasior@khazad-dum.rutgers.edu (Eric Gasior) writes: >evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes: > >>In article <1991Mar15.225317.13890@ico.isc.com> rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes: > > [...comments on aesthetics of Courier & other daisy wheel print wheels deleted...] > > >>The biggest problem, though, is that it's so ubiquitous - It's the only >>font you can produce on just about every typewriter, daisy wheel, LQ dot >>matrix and laser printer ever built. It's too common. In client sites >>where I've upgraded their printers with Postscript cartidges, the main >>oohs and aahs come not from fancy graphics, shading, or scalable >>fonts... it's the ability to do business letters in a proportional font >>without the bother of downloaded fonts. > >Ubiquitous? I've never seen a courrier wheel for my printer, and the >Selectrics I've seen generally don't have it either. Not all monospaced >fonts look alike, or as bad as courrier. I wonder why HP chose it. Courrier has >strange serifs. It's the only monospaced font that I know where the bases of >the 'i' and 'l' run for most of the character's allotted space. (BTW The Laser >Writer's courrier is different from HP's.) > >EDG Courier comes in various flavours (sorry, I'm English). The IBM Selectrics most definitely had a version of it, and it wasn't bad. There were some subtle variations in the stroke widths, which made it bearable. (At this stage of my life ~15 years ago, I was using a Selectric to type our college magazine, so I know just about all the font golfballs that IBM UK sold at the time for a fixed pitch selectric). HP's Courier, is not unlike IBM's, given the vagarities of rendering for a raster-based device. Adobe-based machines' Courier is one of the worst renditions of Courier that I have ever seen. It gives even an ugly font a bad name :-). It's far too light. I told myself that I would take the font apart one day and fix this as I have the font PFB file, and I think it should just be a matter of changing the stroke weight, but I haven't found the time to do this yet. Meanwhile, I'm still looking for a good fixed pitch font. My complaints about Adobe's Courier apply to all their fixed pitch fonts. I bought their Letter Gothic, which is also too light, and their Prestige Elite looks about the same --at least in "Font & Function". Bitstream has the best fixed pitch fonts I have so far found, and their Fontware program produces good bitmaps. However, I don't think they really have perfected their technology so that their fonts & hints work well with Adobe rasterizers. I'm nitpicking, but some of their fonts look strange, even the new "Speedo" fonts, which come with a Type-1 PFB file. I hope they manage to overcome this, since I am impressed with their Letter Gothic and with their Monospaced Swiss, both of which are *Much* better than Adobe's. John Lister.
koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180) (03/27/91)
In article <Mar.22.16.01.27.1991.855@khazad-dum.rutgers.edu>, gasior@khazad-dum.rutgers.edu (Eric Gasior) writes: > >The biggest problem, though, is that it's so ubiquitous - It's the only > >font you can produce on just about every typewriter, daisy wheel, LQ dot > >matrix and laser printer ever built. It's too common. > > Ubiquitous? I've never seen a Courier wheel for my printer, and the > Selectrics I've seen generally don't have it either. Not all monospaced > fonts look alike, or as bad as Courier. Courier is widely available, but in my [fairly limited] experience with such things most people preferred and got Prestige Elite instead.
asente@adobe.com (Paul Asente) (03/28/91)
In article <1991Mar26.184045.10113@slhisc.uucp> jlister@slhisc.uucp (John Lister) writes: >Meanwhile, I'm still looking for a good fixed pitch font. My complaints about >Adobe's Courier apply to all their fixed pitch fonts. I bought their Letter >Gothic, which is also too light, and their Prestige Elite looks about the same >--at least in "Font & Function". Disclaimer: I'm making this posting as an author. I am currently an employee of Adobe, but I wasn't when I was writing the book I'm about to discuss. Last year I was finishing up a manuscript that I was also doing the typesetting for (X Window System Toolkit by Asente and Swick, if you want to look at the results). I had been using Courier for the monospace font for code examples, and it looked fine on the laser printer proofs. When we got back some sample pages from the typesetter, it was way too light. Courier Bold was way too dark. Time to go looking for another font! Prestige Elite was also too light, but Prestige Elite Bold was just the right weight to combine harmoniously with my body text font (ITC New Baskerville Roman). If you're looking for a monospace font that is about the same weight as common serif fonts, I recommend Prestige Elite Bold. -paul asente asente@adobe.com ...decwrl!adobe!asente