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Comment by executesorder66 | Hacker News Reader

There are good looking open source fonts. So I don't think that's true.

I think there are plenty of good looking open source fonts, but there aren't that many super solid ones.

Glyph wise, I would love to have both tabular and proportional numbers. I also want great hinting so it looks good on Windows devices. I also prefer something that isn't strongly tied to another brand like Roboto is to Android.

Once you take those into account, there isn't actually a ton of options left. And if you want something that compares to the quality you get Hoefler & Co, you end up with close to zero.

I have yet to see an open source font that comes even close to a professional font like Helvetica.

What's wrong with Nimbus Sans?

Nimbus Sans was designed to be a complete lookalike for Helvetica. I'm not sure how they got away with it, except that the IP laws protecting fonts are rather weak.

Besides, I don't think it's open source.

Nimbus Sans is not a lookalike for Helvetica, it is a Helvetica. The visual appearance of fonts is not copyrightable. And it's GPL'd.

What does it mean for a font to be GPL? Does it carry the license along into any project you use that font in?

The GPL version was produced to be included with Ghostscript, which itself is GPL, so that wasn't an issue. I'd be very wary of using it with any other project.

That sounds like FUD.

Inter UI is quite impressive as far as usability goes: https://rsms.me/inter/

I thought DejaVu Sans was pretty descent, especially as a terminal font.

Noto. It feels like having access to an entire professional foundry as a FOSS download.

Though the sans is humanist and not neo-grotesk like Helvetica.

Hell, Noto Sans is available in more weights than Helvetica Neue LT Pro. I've actually found myself wishing that Helvetica Neue LT Pro had a real demi instead of jumping from medium to bold. Noto solves that problem.

Fira Sans, PT Sans/Serif, Roboto, Noto, Source Sans/Code Pro, Cantarell...

Roboto is free, and very very close to Helvetica. http://theunderstatement.com/post/11645166791/roboto-vs-helv...

Just a nitpick: open source does not mean free to use.

Substitute free to use and the statement still hold. I'm actually in favor of sites not specifying any fonts at all - only things like size, bold, italic. Let the user set a font preference in their web browser to something the find easy to read. No designer can say what is pleasing to everyone and never will. This whole thing is really just self gratification for designers.

That’s fine. It’s just a tick in Firefox to do so. Yesterday I made a readme intended for some Windows friends. Just a simple single html page. I set it to “Segoe UI”,sans-serif so it looks more like a Windows manual. If someone opens it on a mobile device or a Mac somehow, then it still looks fine. It mostly just avoids people seeing Times New Roman or Arial, which I don’t need A/B testing for to know is not as nice to look at or doesn’t look very Windows like.

Unless you use Chrome, you can also go to the reader mode to avoid all the CSS. Plenty of options for you!

There are a lot of good looking permissively licenced fonts as well. Often these are licenced under the SIL Open Font License (OFL).

Aren't all online fonts "open source"? You have to let the user download the font to display it.

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