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On Mon, 2005-09-19 at 15:14 -0500, David Neeley wrote:
>
> Font legibility depends upon much more than mere point size. One of
> the most significant dimensions is the "x height"--the body size of
> the letters. Two fonts may look entirely of different size even if
> they are rendered at the same point size, if one has a small x-height
> and the other a large one.
No argument from me. You're just going into a lower level of detail than
I did.
> Other contributors to the apparent size, but in a supporting role,
> include the line thickness variations...an ornate font with a great
> deal of variation, such as a Bodoni, may look less massive than one
> with a uniform stroke thickness.
But, as long as you are going into more detail, I'd add the width of an
em space (the space taken by a lower case "m") as an important indicator
of legibility, too.
> All of this said, I know of *no* font I would wish to subject a reader
> to at 8 point for text. A business card, in which puzzling out a few
> words is all that is usually required, is quite a different animal.
> Text meant to be read should not be a painful exercise for its reader.
I might consider something like Bookman, or Bitstream Vera Sans.
There are also one or two fonts like Aldus in which the letter forms are
designed for small type. Another weakness of most digital fonts is that
letter forms don't change with the size of the fonts, which was often
not the case in pre-digital ones. In other words, a font that is
designed to be used at 12 points might have letters whose strokes were
too thin at 8 points to look very good. A few fonts partly get around
this problem by having different metrics for three or four different
sizes, but they are rare.
Another thing: Sans serif or slab serif fonts would probably be better
candidates for small type than anything else.
"Mr Ledbetter won't you tell me again,
What's a Mississippi flush and how's it beat this hand?"
"They don't ask questions in the graveyard,
It's a small revolver and any five cards."
- Ray Wylie Hubbard, "Mississippi Flush"
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