Change font because 1 and l are similar.

[rgaiacs]

@dakane1 opened swcarpentry/shell-novice#612 saying that

I had a number of issues distinguishing 1 (ones) from the letter l. When I mentioned it to a few people they said they were having the same problem.

Screenshot

Technical details

If you are using a high resolution display (HIDPI) like the retina display in some MacBooks, the QHD+ in some laptops or (you are the luck one with) the 4k monitor you may have some issues due many factors that some fonts doesn't scale properly and the text looks super small making hard to read and distinguish some symbols that are similar. If this is your case, sorry but we can't do much for you.

The CSS related information about the font that we are using in the main body of the lesson is

font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 14px;
line-height: 1.42857143;
color: #333;

Because of my completely lack of design skills, I'm open to suggestions about what we should use as font-family. As long as you suggest a open source font, I will not oppose to make the change.

[dakane1]

I had actually printed the lessons and was not reading them on a screen, not sure if that information helps or not. http://swcarpentry.github.io/shell-novice/aio/. I can ask a web designer I know to see if they have any font recommendations.

[rgaiacs]

@dakane1 Thanks for the information. It is very useful.

For the main text, the only difference of the CSS used for print is

color: #000 !important;

which enforce a darker colour.

I can ask a web designer I know to see if they have any font recommendations.

Thanks in advance.

[rgaiacs]

@dakane1 did you have the opportunity to ask for suggestion from your web designer friend?

[dakane1]

Sorry, not yet. Start of the quarter has been crazy busy but I will ask after OA Week, which is next week.

[fmichonneau]

Here are some options:

Cabin

License: Open Font License

1Il0O:

Preview:

Open Sans

License: Apache License 2.0

1Il0O:

Preview:

Source Sans Pro

License: Open Font License

1Il0O:

Preview:

Ubuntu

License: Ubuntu Font License

1Il0O:

Preview:

[maxim-belkin]

I like the last two (Source Sans Pro and Ubuntu) the most:

• In Cabin: zero and capital "o" look similar
• In Open Sans: "el" looks similar to capital i

What font do code blocks in the "Ubuntu" example use? I see that number one in the wc -l *.pdb | sort -n | head -n 1 looks different from how it looks in the title

[fmichonneau]

Another option

Abeezee

1lI0O:

Preview:

[fmichonneau]

@maxim-belkin I don't think the font for the code was changed across these examples. It looks like on my laptop, it's rendered as Consolas.

[maxim-belkin]

That's a nice one too.

[dakane1]

I agree with Maxim; Ubuntu, Source Sans Pro, and Abeezee all look like they may work well since you can distinguish between zero and O plus 1 and l.

…

--Danielle Danielle Kane Research Librarian for Emerging Technologies and Service Innovation Interim Data Management & Curation Librarian LAUC-I Chair University of California, Irvine Libraries 949.824.2024 Skype: da.kaneuci [zotsmarter-logo] From: Maxim Belkin <notifications@github.com> Sent: Friday, June 15, 2018 7:41 AM To: carpentries/styles <styles@noreply.github.com> Cc: Danielle A Kane <kaned@uci.edu>; Mention <mention@noreply.github.com> Subject: Re: [carpentries/styles] Change font because 1 and l are similar. (#168) That's a nice one too. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#168 (comment)>, or mute the thread<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AbYj4P_-KMt4NGFA3yzydvjN97oaAQBwks5t88eFgaJpZM4PJPk2>.

[brownsarahm]

I think even Ubuntu and Abeeze are slightly better on the zero versus O than the source sans pro. and Abeeze is slightly more distinct on the letters l vs I

[hoytpr]

Ubuntu or Abeezee look good. I agree with @brownsarahm 's comments.

[maxim-belkin]

A friend of mine with dyslexia says Ubuntu is the most readable one for him.