Aaron Bell

Type design, typography and life. The usual.
See also @[email protected]

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@mwichary @katiecooperco @amyhoodlum Sounds great! Hope you’re able to solve it.

Especially since languages other than English often need differing consideration with the same metrics. It may be worth allowing users to tweak the adjustment manually on a universal basis.

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@mwichary @katiecooperco @amyhoodlum That’s fair. I guess I found it surprising that there isn’t a similar document that explains the issue to users (maybe there is and I haven’t found it?) so it feels a bit one-sided.

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@davelab6 @amyhoodlum @katiecooperco You mean…. a fourth set of metrics in the font? 😂 Or just making Harfbuzz able to figure it out by itself?

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@mwichary @katiecooperco @amyhoodlum That may not work in every case, I guess, but surely it might be a simple solution for basic button alignment at least, which appears to be an ongoing frustration: https://t.co/M1idhxf1ru

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@mwichary @katiecooperco @amyhoodlum >>> If you then use the font metrics to calculate the % of bounding box above and below the baseline, it seems to me you’d be able to roughly figure out what kind of adjustment is necessary to make it sit centered in the text block and can use padding/margin to fix it.

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@katiecooperco @amyhoodlum And this is all ignoring the fact that there’s a wide range of font metrics necessary to support other languages that don’t look or act like English.

This idea of “centering” is very English centric.

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@katiecooperco @amyhoodlum (Sorry I mean “instruct” type designers on how to make their fonts work in Figma)

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@amyhoodlum @katiecooperco (For anyone interested) I generally recommend using Google's vertical metrics: https://t.co/lr7WruQsOA. It produces pretty solid text setting by default which works consistently.

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@amyhoodlum @katiecooperco Of late, there's been a bunch of complaints as people who come from a web background expected fonts to be centered in the vertical metrics bounding box, which is never how fonts have been designed historically (except by coincidence), so it is an ongoing issue. :(

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@OhBendy Want to hear mostly about music? Better to join a music-centric instance. Want general chatter? Find a more general one.

This isn’t to say that one is prevented from discussing other topics (unless the instance rules state that), but more of the prevailing conversation.

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@OhBendy You find people via hashtags, so as long as you use tags, people can and will find you.

The choice of instance is like picking which bar in which you want to hang out. When you walk in, what is the general topic of conversation?

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@TiroTypeworks @OhBendy @EvaSilvertant I like having the type group in my “Local” group since there’s lot’s of folk I’ve never interacted with before and has given greater exposure to people around the world.

But yeah, the “Home” feed is quite different!

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

Alright ya’ll. I’ve pretty much fully moved over to https://t.co/DC6x8De7vh for the toot toot tooting. Come visit over there!

[Aaron Bell @aaronbell]

@realdougwilson @_nickjob Also let’s point out that he didn’t get there from $0.