Amon Rakis
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
0
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Posted - 2011.12.05 05:05:00 -
[1] - Quote
The new font may seem "amazing" or "great" at times, but in all honesty, whoever designed it hadn't been around in the 80's or 90's when designed fonts need crucial guidelines to adhere to:
A) The "tracking" (the space between fonts) is obviously at "0"... but when you look at the printing/font that we are all reading right now... even the information to the left ... underneath my name, for example, has even "tracking".
What does that mean, some may ask? Well, I see "School of Applied Knowledge" under my name. What I see is an EQUAL amount of spacing to the "right" and to the "left" of each letter, making the "l" next to the "i" next to the "e" next to the "d" in "Applied" seem wonderfully next to each other, wonderfully spaced and even.
What I DO NOT SEE IN THE NEW GAME FONT is the same guidelines and behavior:
The letter "e" in the game is too "left aligned" which leaves more space before the next leter... this causes some words to seem out of space or separated unevenly, and this is causing legebility issues, regardless of what font size you choose or what scalability you use.
MOST noticably is the oppositely "congested" numeral "0" (zero). It is pushed to the maximum edges but then, when a symbol like a "," (comma) or a "." (period) or even a ":" (colon) are immediately after the number zero, it is "wedged" right next to the "right end horizontal line" of the zero character. This makes reading symbology difficult.
An example would be the TIME: 08:04 in the lower lefthand menu column is barely noticable. This is not only because the ":" (colon) is immediately set up to display right after the previous "character/number" but also creates problems in reading AND SPACING.
This is most noticable when seeing the "thin" (unboldened) print o the font (something we users cannot replicate) - yet we see it in the TIME, DATE, TAB TITLES, and MARKET PRICING. The symbols are far more "thin"... and when you use them in an unbolded way, the TIME (for example) loses any sense of visably seeing a ":" (colon). So the time may be 10:42 or 01:16 but when you look at those TWO examples alone, you'll see uneven spacing near the "colon"... and to make things worse, the colon is much thinner, and therefore not visible.
This adds to NON-CONTINUITY amongst all letters and numbers. Anyone who has designed a font professionally knows that there needs to be an exacting amount of space on both "left" and "right" sides of EACH letter, number, and symbol. This creates a universal tracking...
This "new font" is LACKING that continuity.
If you doubt it, take a look at the lowercase "e" in any siutation... especially the market, but even in typing mail. The "e" (lowercase) is "left-side heavy" and therefor places 1 pixel (or so) too much extra space on it's other side before the next letter/symbol/number. This is more visible when you select an item and have it "emboldened"... like the price of something when purchasing/selling an item. Also see in the market listing... espcially when a "zero" is involved... Right now any of us reading this text/forum IN A BROWSER, will see the evenly spaced lettering made by the pre-existing (and functionally made) font. I see it in the predefined typeface we all see "beautifully" under our portraits ( definied in the source code as style=display: inline; float: right; font-weight: bold; text-align: right;) and even the undefined font my browser is using to type this text - which is very different. What they all have in common is even spacing on each side of each letter. Especially the "e" which seems to be one of the few (but several) problematic characters in this "new eve font"...
If I typed "new Eve font" in the game, we'd see a slight bit more spacing to the RIGHT of each instance of the letter "e"... and this breaks up the words formed by the letters.
This has been, as a font designer and editor in my personal RL career in the past 20 years, something that I'm wrestling with as I am "trying to LIKE the new font" but I simply can't. What makes it worse is that we have the only option of seeing the "normal" (slightly boldened) version/thickness of the font in all things... EXCEPT when the UI uses a special THIN (or as some may have come to know as "NARROW" version of the font)... this NARROW verions means almost a 1 pixel line version of the font that us user can NEVER user: "possibly anti-aliased", but nonetheless, a problematically visual situation in: the CLOCK TIME, DATE, MARKET VALUES, LISTINGS of the "very much BROKEN" CORP BLUEPRINTS section of the Science and Industry tabs, as well as labels for all tabs of most windows, including the tabs for chat windows, hangars, etc.)
This is hurting the eyes for several people.
The solution, after reading the Feedback AND the Issues pages seems to be almost 50/50 for all people... "all" at least as in "all people who have chosen to bother voicing their feedback and issues".
This is one of a myriad of problems, but I'm filing this under feedback because it is something we all want boiled down to:
OUR CHOICE.
Half of us love the new font. Great. I'm very happy for you people who love it.
Half of us dislike it, hate it, or "can't put our finger on it, but we don't like the change". Well, there in itself lies a problem:
Just like the CQ (which is a bug report of heell I've been working on filing because I seem to be a walking "head and half torso" defying laws of physics... and even in the Hangar (also with a windows problem that makes the whole thing "float around" instead of just the ship, creates a situation where you have users who WANT A CHOICE.
If anything is supposed to be "great" about any upgrade, it should be to give a choice to its paying users who wish to continue playing the game.
It may be personal for some, it may be visually medical for others. The reason shouldn't be the issue. The issue is in the flaw of the font's CURRENT design.
CLIENT: WINDOWS XP4 |