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I very much appreciate all of the hard work that goes into striving for a consistent, beautiful UX in ElementaryOS. It feels like there is a driving vision beh

I very much appreciate all of the hard work that goes into striving for a consistent, beautiful UX in ElementaryOS. It feels like there is a driving vision behind all of the design and usability choices. The move to Inter as a UI font will be a good step forward, as Open Sans has not aged well. Especially as displays are higher and higher DPI, another good step forward would be to completely disable font hinting. It's subjective, but it would seem consistent with the rest of the distro's approach to visual design. But those are details that some like me deeply appreciate, while others don't see what the fuss is about one way or the other, for better or worse. What really matters is that I can throw ElementaryOS on my wife's or mom's laptop, and they can figure it all out no problem, without all of the terrible anti-user everything that is Windows.

systemvoltage 5y ago
Inter, IMO is a terrible choice for a UI font. It’s the exact reason why Apple switched from Helvetica [1]. If you want to learn more, see the difference between Apple’s SF Pro, SF Pro Display and SF Pro Text. Inter is a font that fits neither as a body text (fitting is awfully inconsistent), as a display typeface and certainly not as an interface typeface (counters are too tight, fitting needs to be redone specifically for interfaces, hinting is lacking and it is untested on various DPI settings and optimizations that someone like Apple has put effort into). For the record, I think Apple’s UI has gotten worse but they’ve hired one of the best Typographers in the world. They did several presentations in WWDC 2016. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography_of_Apple_Inc.#Helvetica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography_of_Apple_Inc.#Helve...
- smoldesu 5y ago
  I absolutely agree. I tried Inter the other day for my interface, and everything immediately felt wrong. However, I then tried using it on my résumé, and it looked fantastic! On the Apple note, I agree that SF is a pretty good font, but it's also not without it's issues (which are being exacerbated in updates like Big Sur).

systemvoltage 5y ago

Inter, IMO is a terrible choice for a UI font. It’s the exact reason why Apple switched from Helvetica [1]. If you want to learn more, see the difference between Apple’s SF Pro, SF Pro Display and SF Pro Text. Inter is a font that fits neither as a body text (fitting is awfully inconsistent), as a display typeface and certainly not as an interface typeface (counters are too tight, fitting needs to be redone specifically for interfaces, hinting is lacking and it is untested on various DPI settings and optimizations that someone like Apple has put effort into). For the record, I think Apple’s UI has gotten worse but they’ve hired one of the best Typographers in the world. They did several presentations in WWDC 2016. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography_of_Apple_Inc.#Helvetica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography_of_Apple_Inc.#Helve...

smoldesu 5y ago
I absolutely agree. I tried Inter the other day for my interface, and everything immediately felt wrong. However, I then tried using it on my résumé, and it looked fantastic! On the Apple note, I agree that SF is a pretty good font, but it's also not without it's issues (which are being exacerbated in updates like Big Sur).