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Comment by alecbenzer | Hacker News Reader

I commented here as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3130877, but does it really make sense to compare individual letters of fonts? I'd think that a well designed font would be able to convey a different feel when looking at large bodies of text (larger than single letters, at least) via subtle nuances, even if individual letters look like those in a different font.

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I agree. Individual letters don't really say much about the typeface, and that's not at all how we use them. When it comes to the use of a mobile OS' main typeface, it would make more sense to compare words and short phrases, and I think the two would probably be more distinguishable by a larger set of people than this test will probably show. FWIW I got 70% — some letters are definitely similar, but others were very distinguishable.

Absolutely on the money. Roboto looks really similar to Helvetica; in fact, so similar, that it wouldn't be improper to accuse Google of ripping off something without due credit (at least the presentation had nothing to say about Helvetica). Google has the money to license a font, and with Apple moving to Helvetica Neue as the default font on iOS , Helvetica could have been a fair option.

That being said, I like Robota and am glad that Android has a nicer font now. Also, people don't care, or shouldn't have to care, if it's Helvetica or something else, as long as it is more pleasing to the eye. On that count, Google did a good thing; good but not classy.

Definitely. Comparing fonts letter by letter is something only a font priest could do. Here is a paragraph comparison I found on the other Hacker News post on the matter:

https://minus.com/lYhmsD1xeT9ap

Helvetica has a lot of different "weights". I wonder if they would look more similar if you compared to a heavier weight?

Edit: here's what I mean https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Helvetic... and http://sixrevisions.com/infographics/helvetica-font-weights-...

I can totally tell the difference if you bold helvetica.

I'd love to see that with better (okay, different) font rendering.

With a quick glance to both paragraphs I felt I could notice a difference, although I had difficulty distinguishing when I starting trying to compare individual words.

We'll likely add testing on larger bodies of text at some point.

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