Bug 7469 - DejaVu needs a semi-bold weight
Summary: DejaVu needs a semi-bold weight
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: DejaVu
Classification: Unclassified
Component: General (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: x86 (IA32) Linux (All)
: high enhancement
Assignee: Deja Vu bugs
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Depends on:
Blocks: 7433 7470
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Reported: 2006-07-09 10:04 UTC by Nicolas Mailhot
Modified: 2007-07-09 05:35 UTC (History)
0 users

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Description Nicolas Mailhot 2006-07-09 10:04:27 UTC
DejaVu needs a semi-bold weight to accomodate people who feel regular is too
thin and people who think bold is too heavy compared to regular
Comment 1 Helge Hielscher 2006-07-22 18:51:49 UTC
Please make sure that the extra font weights (extra light, semi bold, etc.) map
to the 9 steps of boldness defined in CSS.
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/fonts.html#font-boldness
Comment 2 Denis Jacquerye 2006-07-23 00:32:32 UTC
We currently have:
200 - ExtraLight
400 - Book
700 - Bold

This leaves rooms for 100 (Thin*), 300 (Light), 500 (Medium), 600 (SemiBold),
800 (Black), 900 (ExtraBlack).
* Names should not matter, systems that use them in the backend are flawed.

http://www.monotypeimaging.com/ProductsServices/pan3.aspx is very useful on the
topic.
With their WeightRat = CapH / WStem(E) we have:
ExtraLight: 14.6 (10 <= WeightRat < 18) -> 300 (Thin)
Regular: 7.4 (5.5 <= WeightRat < 7.5) -> 500 (Medium), 0.1 short of being 400
Bold: 3.9 (3.5 <= WeightRat < 4.5) -> 700 (Bold)

Legacy systems would need families of 4 styles. We recently split ExtraLight
into another legacy family: DejaVu Sans Light. Here's a list of what the
families could be:
Thin : 100
Light : 200, 300
Regular : 400, 700 - Current default family
Medium : 500, 600 - strange family in between Regular and Bold
Black : 800, (900*)

Anyway, it will take time before anybody seriously starts working on these.
Comment 3 Denis Jacquerye 2007-07-09 05:35:17 UTC
Hirwen Harendal has made some Medium and Semi-Bold variants of Vera, available at http://perso.orange.fr/arkandis/ADF/workshop.htm


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