[scribus] Font fitting best - style question

Bert Driehuis driehuis at playbeing.org
Thu Sep 15 10:44:46 UTC 2022


I'm not sure you can reliably use fonts for forms that are not in the set
of fonts that comes with Acrobat Reader. You may end up requiring the users
of the form to install the font on their local system. I never tried making
one myself I must admit, but I regularly have to fill out PDF forms with
really bad behavior due to fonts, so it is probably hard to get right.
Whatever you do, test the PDF you generate on as many different computers
as you can, including at least one that doesn't have the fonts you use
pre-installed.

Using a font that can legally be distributed with the document, like the
suggested Alegreya, may make that situation easier. Years ago, after being
burned for the umpteenth time by fonts that I purchased, I decided to use
my font budget for donations to designers of open source fonts, and I
totally stopped using commercial fonts.

I'm obviously biased, but I quite like the combination of Dinish and
Vollkorn, and Vollkorn will probably play nicely with Syntax as well.

https://fonts.playbeing.com/dinish/
http://vollkorn-typeface.com/
(and I just decided to donate my 2022 font budget to the maker of Vollkorn,
thanks for the nudge)

Vollkorn is very recognisably a serif font, but it is eminently legible and
I use it for both running texts and headers.

Of course, if you ask 12 designers what's the best font, you'll end up with
13 recommendations. My recommendation for fonts for form entry is to use a
good programmer's font, such as Hack Regular or Anonymous Pro, for ultimate
clarity.

https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/
https://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro

With kind regards,

Bert

On Thu, 15 Sept 2022 at 11:12, Rolf-Werner Eilert <rwe-sse at osnanet.de>
wrote:

> Now this is a question to the layout professionals here...
>
> Currently I am working on a PDF form which contains fields to be filled.
>
> Our standard font is Syntax, but I would like to use some serif font for
> the PDF fields (to be able to distinguish I and l for instance and
> because it is better readable) in bold. And it shouldn't look too ugly.
>
> Is there a style guide of some kind which has some tips how to choose a
> serif font fitting best in combination with a sans font?
>
> For a first trial, I chose Times New Roman Bold, but it looks terrible
> with Syntax.
>
> I browsed the fonts on my system, and I found the following looking best
> with Syntax:
> - Linux Libertine O Bold
> - New Century Schoolbook Bold
> - URW Palladio L Bold
> - Utopic Bold
>
> But I am not sure if there is maybe something better. So thank you for
> every input!
>
> Regards
> Rolf
>
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