I always heard that accessibility is much better on proprietary platforms, so I was surprised when I tried to port my fontconfig over to one.
Just changing the system font was really difficult, and configuring font features was not supported at all. Instead, the advise I got was to compile a custom version of my font, from source, with those font features as default.
Now I’m back on Linux and really appreciate it. I can tell the difference between “Weird AI” and “Weird Al”, and generally don’t struggle as much with reading.
You might immediately notice that the most commonly used fonts on these sites, Arial and Helvetica, are fonts that come bundled with Microsoft Windows, and are most likely not installed on your Linux system.
Helvetica is not part of the Windows or Office install. It is one of the PostScript Level 1 fonts and is part of the default macOS install. Arial, in contrast, is part of the MS Core Fonts for the Web (freeware) package, which I’ve installed on every *NIX desktop I’ve ever used because a huge number of web sites (and other documents) assume that they exist. It’s also a PostScript Level 3 font.
I always heard that accessibility is much better on proprietary platforms, so I was surprised when I tried to port my fontconfig over to one.
Just changing the system font was really difficult, and configuring font features was not supported at all. Instead, the advise I got was to compile a custom version of my font, from source, with those font features as default.
Now I’m back on Linux and really appreciate it. I can tell the difference between “Weird AI” and “Weird Al”, and generally don’t struggle as much with reading.
Helvetica is not part of the Windows or Office install. It is one of the PostScript Level 1 fonts and is part of the default macOS install. Arial, in contrast, is part of the MS Core Fonts for the Web (freeware) package, which I’ve installed on every *NIX desktop I’ve ever used because a huge number of web sites (and other documents) assume that they exist. It’s also a PostScript Level 3 font.