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[therahedwig]

So, I saw that during the UCSC talk that there was still some questions on what kind of font to use for the premium version. I have dyslexia, so I figured I could give some nice suggestions on this front.

My recommendation for large swathes of text is Google's Noto, specifically the regular serif one:

https://www.google.com/get/noto/

Serif fonts are most commonly used for large texts, supposedly because they're more legible. However, the prime reason to use it for DF is that it is just closer to the fantasy aesthetic, as well, CP437 is semi-serif as well. The Noto font because it is free to use as well as having a wide language support so it should be a little bit future proof if the future sees translation of the game.

For display (that's headers and big text), if you wanted to make it fancy, there's of course Noto Serif Display, but for a bit more time-appropriateness there's Unifraktur Maguntia and Unifraktur Cook and the much more readable (but still invoking the old-timey feeling) Berkshire Swash. Do not use these for the large swathes of text. Funnily enough I, dyslexic person, can actually read blackletter and textura scripts just as easily as everything else, but most people cannot.

Some people with dyslexia really benefit from being able to choose open dyslexic, so being able to configure font would be great:

https://www.opendyslexic.org/

In my case, opendyslexic is not all that useful, but rather I really benefit from larger (or configurable) font-sizes (14 to 18px) and higher (or configurable) line-spacing (I am pretty happy with a comfortable academic 1.5). On top of that, I really benefit from paragraphs.

Before we continue on, I'd also highly recommend limiting the total line width. Elements of typographic style has some good guides regarding this.

Text Suggestions.

So, as stated before, I would really benefit if there's more paragraphs. I know for a fact there's someone on the development team that understands paragraphs. Generally, if the paragraphs feel too short (because they're one sentence long, for example) it is because the topic of the paragraph cannot have said more about it. In real-world writing we try to merge together paragraphs in that case, but that might be really hard to do programmatically. In DF's case I don't think you should be ashamed of single-sentence paragraphs for that reason.

My Friend The Dwarf

My Friend The Dwarf was a legendary pig tail quire.

This is a pig tail quire. 
Written on the item is a biography entitled My Friend the Dwarf, authored by Tobul Flaxenquakes.  It concerns the dwarf Tosid Windpicks.  The overall text emphasizes the value of knowledge.  The writing is reasonably serious yet it is somewhat self-indulgent.  Overall, the prose is not awful, but not very good either.  The work has two chapters.  The first chapter covers the creation of Uncanny Cycles in Paperposts by the dwarf Tosid Windpicks in the early autumn of 252.  The second chapter covers the creation of Book Of Biography in Paperposts by the dwarf Tosid Windpicks in the late autumn of 252. 

In the early summer of 253, My Friend The Dwarf was created in Skinbasement by the dwarf Tobul Flaxenquakes.
In the early summer of 253, My Friend The Dwarf was stored in Skinbasement.
In the early summer of 253, My Friend The Dwarf was stolen from Skinbasement by the dwarf Tobul Flaxenquakes.
In the early summer of 253, My Friend The Dwarf was offered to the dwarf Tosid Windpicks by the dwarf Tobul Flaxenquakes.
 

This could probably be split up a little, here splitting up where there ought to be paragraphs:

My Friend The Dwarf

My Friend The Dwarf was a legendary pig tail quire.

This is a pig tail quire. 

Written on the item is a biography entitled My Friend the Dwarf, authored by Tobul Flaxenquakes.  It concerns the dwarf Tosid Windpicks.

The overall text emphasizes the value of knowledge.  The writing is reasonably serious yet it is somewhat self-indulgent.  Overall, the prose is not awful, but not very good either.

The work has two chapters.

The first chapter covers the creation of Uncanny Cycles in Paperposts by the dwarf Tosid Windpicks in the early autumn of 252. 

The second chapter covers the creation of Book Of Biography in Paperposts by the dwarf Tosid Windpicks in the late autumn of 252. 

In the early summer of 253, My Friend The Dwarf was created in Skinbasement by the dwarf Tobul Flaxenquakes.
In the early summer of 253, My Friend The Dwarf was stored in Skinbasement.
In the early summer of 253, My Friend The Dwarf was stolen from Skinbasement by the dwarf Tobul Flaxenquakes.
In the early summer of 253, My Friend The Dwarf was offered to the dwarf Tosid Windpicks by the dwarf Tobul Flaxenquakes.
 

Now, this doesn't look terribly pretty on this forum, so let's put it into a bit of context, and then format it.

First section is what I see right now with the mono spaced square font in my df window. The second is a version with Noto Serif as the font and 1.5 line-spacing. The final is me trying to format it as nicely as I can.

Image URL

Spoiler: Image embedded, can be big if you read the forums zoomed in like me. (click to show/hide)

So the changes for the latter are...

• Smaller total line-width.
• No justification of the text, this is typically only done for texts with columns, or for DF's case, the instrument tooltips, where justification does help readability.
• A smaller space between subsequent paragraphs (which is higher than the line spacing, not sure how possible this is), and also a first-line indent. This is how books tend to have their paragraphs set up and it is really nice for large swathes of text.
• A fancy font+bigger size for the header
• Turning the events at the bottom into a list.
• Italicizing the title of the books. In academic texts the title of the book tends to be italicized or underlined to emphasize that it is a formal title, which makes it easier to read over when said title is quite long. You could use colors for this as well, I suposse. I did not do this consistently; it ought to be done consistently. 
• When starting to list the chapters, I changed the period in "The work has two chapters." into a column.
• I tried to avoid things like drop-caps, which, while fancy, are also a pain to position programatically.

On the really big legends entries (any given dragon), the list of events gets really intimidating. It'd be great if they could somehow be compacted a bit more. As far as I understand there has already been work done for this (because the linking changes made each histfig page totally intimidating), but if there's more to be done I guess I'll make another post

Anyway, it'd be great if the description pages just became a tad bit more formatted than just having a variable width font. Right now I have to focus really really hard to be able to digest them.