Talk:Verdana

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Prologue[edit]

Someone here contributed the comment that Verdana exists on 93% of all computers according to a "survey". Is there a reference to this survey or to any survey that quantifies the percentage of machines that have any particular font installed?

Well I found some web pages that gave a similar number for installations of MSIE but it looks dubious to me, so I removed it until someone substantiates. --Grouse 14:22, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Mispositioned accents[edit]

From the article:

This bug does not reveal itself with Latin letters: àe áe ãe ảe

And yet those accents are most definitely over the "e"s for me - go figure! In fact, it seems to depend what browser I use: they're fine in IE (the latin ones, that is), but wrong in Mozilla. So is this the font definition, or something else? :-/ - IMSoP 22:24, 22 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It is the font definition.  Mozilla simply breaks font kerning somehow. — Monedula 01:20, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
On a reverse note, while the Greek and Cyrillic are broken in IE, they all display correctly in Opera. That appears to be hard-coded behavior though—looking at the font with various tools it seems that Verdana's bug is that all its combining characters are set to combine over the following character by default. The only reason they appear "properly" over the Latin characters is because font rendering sees a + combining tilde and displays the glyph for a with combining tilde, which is more likely to be cleaner than trying to display both characters one over the other. For any character without a precombined glyph it will try to display it incorrectly, even on Latin characters: z̃z for example should have the tilde on the first z, but it doesn't. (Except apparently in Opera; that account of Mozilla's behavior shows that Mozilla is actually being strictly correct.) —Muke Tever 19:43, 29 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I think that Opera takes the combining character from some other font, what is why everything seems correct.  The same thing apply to Mozilla under Linux.— Monedula 10:52, 30 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
I see them over the e as well, using Bitstream Vera in Firefox nightly on linux (with xft font rendering). A Mozilla bug rather than a Verdana one? Any bug reports in the Microsoft tracker? Anything else to back this up? My googling didn't turn anything up so far. -- Gabriel Wicke 12:48, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Mozilla may take the combining accent from another font.  Try changing the font for "Unicode". — Monedula 22:57, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Why Microsoft doesnt fix this Verdana bug? Someone post them report? 212.5.168.149
File:Ffcombiningchar.png
today's Firefox nightly (branch, linux, xft/gtk2) with Bitstream Vera Font
There's no single occurence of Verdana in my mozilla prefs, they all default to Bitstream. I also doubt that fontconfig substitutes verdana fonts (they don't resemble verdana). -- Gabriel Wicke 02:04, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Scrap this- i didn't notice the font was forced in the source, it looks just the same here with Bitstream VeraSans as the default font...
I've experimented with wrapping diacrits in a span with a class using a regex- this works fine for html entities of the ten or so most popular diacritical marks, i didn't figure out how to do a range match for unicode yet though. php per-compatible regexes lack perl's \U feature. -- Gabriel Wicke 15:16, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Font vs Typeface[edit]

And elementary difference. A typeface such as Times New Roman or Verdana, consists of many fonts which are differentiated by weight, angle and size, e.g.

  • 12pt Verdana Bold Italic
  • 16pt Verdana Normal
  • 9pt Verdana Italic

The fonts are adjusted for visual balance. For example, if you magnified an 8pt Time font to match the size of a 12pt one, they would not be identical. The more popular electronic fonts have also been adjusted (hinted) to improve rendering at small sizes. dramatic 21:54, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Highways[edit]

Is this used for highway signs? It looks very similar to the font used for highway signs. If it used on highway signs, mention it in the article. --SuperDude 15:20, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I drove US-81 in Pennsylvania this weekend past, and the newer signs used a newer typeface that looked like a cross between Verdana and Trebuchet. Definitely not FHWA (which I have installed locally, too). Would be interesting to know what is replacing FHWA, and why, and whether the new typeface owes anything to Verdana. 74.69.191.220 (talk) 02:07, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • A little more digging around on Wikipedia shows that the typeface we're beginning to see on highway signs is Clearview (typeface). Which, you'll admit, looks like something between Verdana and Trebuchet. 74.69.191.220 (talk) 02:12, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bug[edit]

I've tagged the "bug" section with unreferenced. If someone doesn't soon add proof, including details of whether the bug still applies, this needs to be removed. Superm401 - Talk 02:58, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We have a problem - Wikipedia's description of the bug is the clearest one around, and has been copied and referenced widely. In searching for references I've avoided anything too similar to this article's wording. Also, in this field, most research and information is published in blogs (many of them highly reputable) e.g. to date, all information on the beta of Internet Explorer 8 has been released by way of various Microsoft blogs. I found several descriptions of the phenomenon where the author stated they were using verdana but hadn't realised that the problem they were describing was specific to verdana. The bug also caused issues with the wikimedia codebase. Any detailed description probably lies within Microsoft's bug tracking database, which is not publically accessible. The bug is self-verifying in the example given, so I think that in the circumstances we need to accept minimal referencing. Removing the content would be a disservice.dramatic (talk) 17:50, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Opening quotation mark[edit]

I think the opening quotation mark (‘ and “) seems to be the wrong way round in Verdana, but this is not a problem unique to this typeface. – Kaihsu (talk) 09:36, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Arial: “
Times New Roman: “
Verdana: “
It's ugly, but looks like it's going the right way to me.—Chowbok ☠ 21:37, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You should not compare the results in your browser since you cannot be sure if your browser really uses Verdana. I installed Verdana from here: http://www.schriftarten-fonts.de/fonts/8758/verdana.html and got this result: http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~udctt/anfuehrungszeichen.png . Compare the article in the German Wikipedia, too: „Diese Schrift hat einen Gestaltungsfehler: Das im Deutschen und vielen anderen europäischen Sprachen verwendete Anführungszeichen oben – Unicode U+201C (“) bzw. U+2018 (‘) – ist nach links statt nach rechts geneigt. Dies stört den Lesefluss und führt zu einem stilistisch unschönen Schriftbild.“ — “This font has a design flaw: The in German and in many other European languages ​​used upper quotation marks – Unicode U +201 C (") or U +2018 (') – are inclined to the left instead of right. This disrupts the reading flow and results in a messy style typeface.” — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.177.145.141 (talk) 15:00, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Arial: „ “
Liberation Sans: „ “
Times New Roman: „ “
Liberation Serif: „ “
Georgia: „ “
Droid Serif: „ “
Verdana: „ “
Tahoma: „ “
Courier New: „ “
This is just a different style for the quotation mark. It's not a fault. Tahoma's quotations and Courier New's quotations look the same as in Verdana. It may be argued that it's an ugly shape, or a better shape for tiny font-sizes, but that won't change the fact that it's not a fault. Thanks. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 15:41, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Does the upper quotation mark here look the same for you as the one in my example? For me not. However, I run Linux, so possibly the Verdana here is replaced by something else. Also possible that they changed it later and the font in my example is an older version.--87.177.145.141 (talk) 15:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I installed several fonts from Microsoft and they are inclined this way. Before, I always saw the correct ones on this page, seemingly the fonts replacing Verdana and the others on Linux have got the “right” quotation marks with 66-99. Of course they did not change this for fun, in English texts it is ok, but in German typesetting it just looks wrong. So either they did not think of German typesetting or they did not care about it. --87.177.145.141 (talk) 16:21, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I added some common Linux fonts which replace Windows fonts. I'll show you some other fonts which never distinguish all of the single quotation shapes and the double quotation shapes, then tell me, which are supposed to be faulty, the ones which distinguish the opening and closing quotations, or the ones which don't?
Arial (distinguishes): „ “ " ” ‘ ' ’
Liberation Sans (distinguishes): „ “ " ” ‘ ' ’
Droid Sans (the difference is negligible): „ “ " ” ‘ ' ’
Segoe UI (identical): „ “ " ” ‘ ' ’
DejaVu Sans (the difference is negligible): „ “ " ” ‘ ' ’
Times New Roman (distinguishes): „ “ " ” ‘ ' ’
Liberation Serif (distinguishes): „ “ " ” ‘ ' ’
Georgia (distinguishes): „ “ " ” ‘ ' ’
Droid Serif (distinguishes): „ “ " ” ‘ ' ’
DejaVu Serif (the difference is negligible): „ “ " ” ‘ ' ’
Courier New (distinguishes): „ “ " ” ‘ ' ’
DejaVu Sans Mono (the difference is negligible): „ “ " ” ‘ ' ’
I conclude that if the German second quotation is intended to look as a closing quotation, the same way we know it in most serif fonts, then they are using the wrong Unicode character. They ought to use ⟨„ ”⟩, not ⟨„ “⟩.   --Mahmudmasri (talk) 22:23, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
To me they all look correct, but I guess that I don't have all fonts on my system. I'll work on this later. The standard way of setting quotation marks in German typesetting is first a lower one with shape 99 and then an upper one with shape 66 or a bending which corresponds to this shape. In English typesetting normally you have two upper ones, the first 66 and the second one 99. For this reason in Unicode the character for the closing German quotation mark and the opening English quotation mark is the same. Microsoft changed the shape for the English opening one from 66 to something different, which might be useful in English typesetting, but looks strange in German where it is the closing one. So actually you would need one more character in Unicode, for 99 closing in German is unusual (if not to say wrong) as well. Possibly in such a case it would really look better to use the closing English one. However, this is not they way it is supposed to be.--91.56.213.62 (talk) 21:24, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Mahmudmasri, what makes you think that? „“ (bdquo lsquo) is right. „” (bdquo rdquo) looks stupid, is not (rotation) symmetical, and plain wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flying sheep (talk • contribs) 13:17, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't think anything. You are using the wrong characters to represent the German quotation marks and it seems that you haven't taken a good look at my demonstration. The newer versions of Verdana make the quotations look more like those in Segoe UI. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 13:27, 13 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Do you see the image @Flying sheep:? Are you aware now that you imagine wrong things about Verdana?
Yes, I see that more typefaces have this bug. About their look, @Mahmudmasri: is wrong. This is how they should look. Notice that the „” (low 99, high 99) combination does exist, but not in germany. germany uses „“ (low 99, high 66). You can read about the visual specifics here: They are called “comma” and “turned-comma” quatation marks, so mirroring is out of the question; they have to have the basic shapes as in the picture. Tahoma, Verdana, and Courier New are wrong, that’s a fact. Which way are you comfortable to put that fact into the respective articles if my way isn’t satisfactory for you? — flying sheep 08:16, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand. Why are you trying to claim I said the opposite of what I said? --Mahmudmasri (talk) 14:12, 17 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I’m German. For German, the quotation marks are “double low-9 quotation mark” (left) and “left double quotation mark” (right, despite the name). check this source for how they’re supposed to look. Verdana is simply wrong for German. I want this to be in the article. How? — flying sheep 13:23, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Font?[edit]

Is Verdana not the font used on nearly every website, Wikipedia and YouTube included? Should not some mention of this be made? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.26.68.225 (talk) 18:48, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is not. Wikipedia's default stylesheet and Youtube just specify "sans serif", the font choice is left up to the browser. You probably have your default font set to Verdana, that's all.—Chowbok ☠ 21:23, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Youtube uses Arial as its main font, or at least this is the font which appears for Windows users, even if the default sans-serif font in your browser isn't set as Arial. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 15:47, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IKEA controversy[edit]

I'm surprised there's no section about IKEA's choice in 2009 to use Verdana (replacing Futura) for all their publications; there was quite some controversy from the design community. — Edokter (talk) — 18:41, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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