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Comment by slater | Hacker News Reader

What subscription level will finally make them increase their article CSS's line-height from "affront to eyes" to "actually legible"?

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Nobody has ever asked us to do that; I take it you would prefer a larger line spacing?

If nothing else, we can easily add a customization option for that.

Compare and contrast:

Existing line-height:

https://i.ibb.co/dJc14J7G/Screenshot-2026-09-02-at-08-35-06....

With "line-height: 1.25" on <p> tags:

https://i.ibb.co/RkGBQF0D/Screenshot-2026-09-02-at-08-36-17....

on this article:

https://lwn.net/Articles/1092229/

Times New Roman (and STIX Two Text, Libertinus Serif clones) has been designed with increased x-height while keeping the same line height, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_New_Roman#/media/File:Ti...

It's normal for it to appear denser vertically. Your example of increased line height looks suitable for subheadings, but in no way represents the typographic tradition of its use.

Use a user style sheet instead of trying to force your preferences onto others. Or better yet, fix your monitor settings.

Firefox plugin? Script Monkey? Ctrl+ to zoom the page? Reader mode?

Sure, but I meant for all the site's visitors

If you read LWN, surely you are not scared to use a few "advanced" options in your browser...?

I was a web dev for ~20 years, so well aware of options available.

> I meant for all the site's visitors

Is it Ctrl++ or Ctrl+scroll an advanced option?

Yeah, I meant in a general sense - I doubt any LWN reader is not aware of ctrl-+. I think they'd be more concerned if the site became more heavily CSSified - because it would become harder to read with terminal-based browsers.

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