Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

whoops · 2010-09-14 14:40:34

Hi!

I'm searching for an open replacement for the Candice font... and other high quality fonts. As I really don't know much about fonts & stuff, the AUR just looks like a huge mess to me and the packages I tried mostly just installed a lot of really bad (for my purposes at least) fonts...

How do you find / manage fonts?

Which (really good) ones did you buy (/where) because there just isn't a free replacement to be found?

To narrow it down a bit: I'm not planning to print on huge things and I don't plan to project text on houses or something... just "mostly standard size use", sort of (OH god, I know nothing about printing either)...

Thanks!

karol · 2010-09-14 14:56:48

Candice doesn't look like a font for long pieces of text. Would you mind telling us more precisely what qualities the perfect font would have?
http://new.myfonts.com/tags/funny/

Last edited by karol (2010-09-14 14:58:17)

whoops · 2010-09-14 16:01:35

It's mostly an example... sorry, my question is a mess

...because I'm not too sure what I'm looking for. For some reason I'd say "Candice" looks "better" than most of the "funny-tag" fonts from your links, even if it's hard to compare as they're all very different. Also, they all "taste" different - there's nothing in between that id's use in the same place as that "Candice" one.

Also for some reason of all the fonts I found, the ones I liked most were only available as a demo version for free & some of them really expensive to buy.

Guess I'm just searching for a solid repertoire of good fonts for different purposes... like a "small full set" - and don't really know where to start. There seem to be too many low quality fonts around, can't find the "good" free ones... and I need to find those to decide which ones of the "cheap ones" I want... and I need to find those before I know If I'm going to buy one or two of the more expensive ones.

Guess I'm going to see if I can find more examples of fonts I like and figure out if there's something in common which goes beyond personal taste.

karol · 2010-09-14 16:18:24

Fonts are no different than apps or songs: most are ... not that good :-)

I use fonts for decent rendering of text in my browser and in terminal, I'm not into DTP / graphic design so I suggest starting with:
http://www.fontstock.net/
http://www.fonts.com/
http://www.dafont.com/

That will give you an idea what's free and what's for fee.

anonymous_user · 2010-09-14 17:06:45

http://www.fontpark.net/
http://typedia.com/
http://fonts500.com/

frabjous · 2010-09-14 17:16:49

I tend to use Font Squirrel, since it's pretty up front about its licenses. (Some "free fonts" sites are clearly distributing fonts illegally.) Kernest is over more upfront, but sometimes makes you jump through hoops to actually download the fonts (as opposed to just inserting the necessary CSS for a webpage).

Personally, Candice does not look anything like a "standard size use" or something to be included in a small repertoire of fonts for everyday use, but this will obviously depend on what you're doing with your computer. Maybe you should tell us.

Last edited by frabjous (2010-09-14 17:17:18)

caligo · 2010-09-14 19:10:14

Font Squirrel, as already mentioned, is a good place to start. Others are freetypography and The League of Moveable Type. You might also be interested in this blogpost, as well as this and this. Speaking more specifically of script fonts like Candice, this might be of some interest.

whoops wrote:

Guess I'm just searching for a solid repertoire of good fonts for different purposes... like a "small full set" - and don't really know where to start. There seem to be too many low quality fonts around, can't find the "good" free ones... and I need to find those to decide which ones of the "cheap ones" I want... and I need to find those before I know If I'm going to buy one or two of the more expensive ones.

Different people tend to have quite different needs when it comes to fonts. These are some of the typefaces that I use quite often -- I guess they constitute as good a starting point as any: Chunk Five, Linux Libertine, Delicious, Fontin, Aller Sans, Inconsolata, Junction and Yanone Kaffeesatz. All of these are free typefaces, and I think most of them are available in AUR.

Last edited by caligo (2010-09-14 19:26:34)

whoops · 2010-09-20 11:27:02

Thanks, that's a lot of stuff to look into!

this will obviously depend on what you're doing with your computer. Maybe you should tell us.

Everything... or more precisely "the beginner parts of each area" or something. I'm more the "broad computer use" than "deep computer use" sort of user I guess... also I guess my english might be to broad or not deep enough for this topic

So... unless - despite the license chaos that would probably result in - arch / AUR packages turn up, that have a collection of 12 to 24 fonts with "something high quality for most common uses" in it, I'll be busy for a while trying to figure out the "optimal minimal" collection with the best "possible uses / amount of fonts"-ratio. Or something... phew, already I want to give up *g*

Any hints on "Font browsing" & trying using arch? How do you organize them? My first choice so far would be just wget'ing them into a folder and using imagemagick or something to generate test texts and "easy instant logos" of different sizes, orientations & colours etc., but haven't tried / figured out much yet... gotta keep it sorted by license maybe or something...

Last edited by whoops (2010-09-20 11:31:47)

thisoldman · 2010-09-20 14:16:38

whoops wrote:

Any hints on "Font browsing" & trying using arch? How do you organize them?

I test installed fonts for screen display using http://www.typetester.org/.

There are many font managers out there. I prefer the older fontmanager from the AUR, http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=30037 over its updated incarnation, font-manager, http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=29861.

I haven't found a good way to test fonts without installing them. And what looks bad on screen may look fine in print. I wish there was an affordable 300+ dpi monitor.

whoops · 2010-09-20 14:42:04

I haven't found a good way to test fonts without installing them.

Haven't tried to figure that out yet, so: Does that mean imagemagick / convert can't just use font files? I hoped I could just run a three-line-script or something over a whole directory full of fonts to get a few different test images with more than just plain text...

thisoldman wrote:

I wish there was an affordable 300+ dpi monitor.

So I guess just going back to the other side of the room and looking from afar at very big text doesn't do the trick? Not even a little?
Well, I guess I'll start printing & comparing once I narrowed it down a bit - now to test "fontmanager" & "font-manager", thanks!

Last edited by whoops (2010-09-20 14:43:00)

thisoldman · 2010-09-20 23:48:02

Even cheap printers have 300 dpi resolution. With a 300 dpi monitor, we might get closer to true WYSIWIG software.

I'm sensitive to font hinting, particularly with small fonts, but I find unhinted fonts to be very distorted. My sensitivity may be due to astigmatism. But I do see the beauty in the glyphs in a typeface and appreciate the decisions a typeface designer has to make. I just wish my monitor could show a typeface with the accuracy of a cheap printer.

I haven't experimented with imagemagick and fonts. I hope you come up with something that satisfies you.

frabjous · 2010-09-21 02:04:24

I use specimen font previewer to view and compare fonts (gnome-specimen package in AUR); it's not super feature rich, but it's fine for my purposes. Another more advanced font manager is fontmatrix (also in AUR), which has some nice features (too many for my needs, if you know what I mean), including if I remember right, the ability to handle, preview, sort, etc., uninstalled fonts.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-09-14 14:40:34

Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

#2 2010-09-14 14:56:48

Re: Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

#3 2010-09-14 16:01:35

Re: Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

#4 2010-09-14 16:18:24

Re: Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

#5 2010-09-14 17:06:45

Re: Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

#6 2010-09-14 17:16:49

Re: Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

#7 2010-09-14 19:10:14

Re: Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

#8 2010-09-20 11:27:02

Re: Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

#9 2010-09-20 14:16:38

Re: Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

#10 2010-09-20 14:42:04

Re: Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

#11 2010-09-20 23:48:02

Re: Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

#12 2010-09-21 02:04:24

Re: Good Open Replacement for Candice font (and other fonts and stuff)?

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