[Design-team] MgOpen Modata & accents

[Paul W. Frields]

On Thu, Jun 03, 2010 at 11:40:27PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> Luya's blog post tonight [1] reminded me of an ongoing issue we have -
> our secondary font, MgOpen Modata, doesn't have basic accent marks (I
> can't even write my own name in it.) 
> 
> Do we want to consider switching to a different font that does? There
> are more openly-licensed fonts than ever, far more than when we
> initially decided to go with MgOpen Modata. I found this font that has a
> similar rounded look (it's a wider and more widely-spaced font, but I
> think that's okay) and it seems to cover all the basic accents including
> acute, grave, umlat, circumflex, etc.:
> 
> http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Quicksand
> 
> It's called Quicksand. The author has said he has released it
> 'license-free' and commercial use is permitted. We would need to get in
> touch with him and see if he would be amenable to releasing it under a
> recognized open font license before we could include it in Fedora, but
> he does seem responsive in the typophile forums [2]. 
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> ~m
> 
> [1]
> http://blog.thefinalzone.net/2010/06/mgopen-modata-andet-accents.html
> 
> [2] http://www.typophile.com/node/50437#comment-346232

Speaking only for my tastes, this font seems more excentric than
Modata.  The wider spacing could have a negative impact on content
where we can effectively use Modata now -- having to use a lot more
space for the same amount of information.  I'm not saying we want a
tightly condensed font, but Quicksand seems skewed too far in the
other direction.


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Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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