help me do my job

[mountain_laurel]

i'm designing a Frame template for a document that will be distributed in PDF format. at all my previous jobs, the default body text font was 10 point Times New Roman. it's a familiar font that's very readable in print, but i'm not quite convinced it's the best choice for a PDF document, so i've got a few questions about how people use PDF documentation and what their font preferences are. feel free to comment on anything you think i haven't covered, since i know some of you are extremely particular about this sort of thing.

me personally, i think 12 point is easist to read online, but is too big in print. maybe 11 point is the answer? maybe i'm being excessively fussy? maybe people prefer the familiar and i should shut up and stick with Times10pt? let me know what you think.

IMPORTANT: the URL i give for the sample document is wrong, and i can't go back and edit it now -- the correct url is http://www.writingtable.net/samples/Untitled.pdf. sorry about that!

[Poll #954218]

Comments

[crisper.livejournal.com]

That test-document link took me to some default top-of-tree page, not to a PDF document of fonts.

[nothings.livejournal.com]

There's something screwy with the fonts in that PDF; they look way worse than PDF fonts normally do for me (there's inconsistent weights like they're not being hinted right, and the baseline of the TNR 12pt seems inconsistent between letterforms). Mind you, they're not awful (the way a lot of postscript->PDF conversions are), they're just slightly wonky. Normally TNR in a PDF is fine for me.

I tend to pref zoom-to-fit-width if text is single-column and zoom-to-fit-page if it is multi-column, for obvious UI navigation reasons. I'll zoom until the font is readable if necessary, but if that introduces horizontal scrolling it's a PITA.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Let's be more difficult. I'll read a short document online. I'll probably print out a large one.
My have-to-be-difficult print-vs-screen balance is that yes, I want it readable at 2-up sizing, but I don't want to have to 2x the number of pages due to the layout.

On screen, I try to size to whatever /scrolls/ the easiest…

In printed fonts I want serifs, good descenders, and reasonable kerning (except if it's a monospace. In screen fonts… I don't know.

That help at all? (Oh, and your example URL's 404ing…)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Oddly, i preferred Palatino 12 at "Fit Page" but Century Schoolbook 12 at 100%. I was surprised at how nice the TNR 12 looked; i hate it in Word.

With my widescreen laptop, i like maximizing my Acrobat Reader window, and then fitting two pages in the window. I wish i could do that in M$ Word.

I like having the doc online for grepping, but printed if i have to read the whole thing.

[kodi]

TNR 12pt looked best to me, but Georgia 12pt was most readable at 100%. At fit-to-page, the only 10pt font that was readable was Georgia. I'm happiest if I can fit the whole page on, because then I can browse through the document with a single key.

[mskala.livejournal.com]

In my Web browser, all those fonts look bad except TNR and Georgia - which also happen to be the two that aren't embedded, so it's quite possible that I'm seeing my carefully handcrufted default fonts instead of whatever you intended to put in.

In xpdf, which handles anti-aliasing better, they all look pretty good; I think TNR and Garamond seem most readable.

[rizbone.livejournal.com]

And by difficult I mean I read manuals on my commute.