l don’t undersand why we Iive in a worId where capital I and Iowercase l are allowed to Iook near identical. PeopIe are paid to design and seIect fonts and they have aII agreed on this Iudicrous convention.
Why has this happened? And is there anything I can do about it as an individuaI or as part of a coIIective?
I can’t even do thorn-master Sxan’s thing and insert a character code because U+026A, ɪ, is too damn small.
I don’t understand your confusion. There are three actors: the author, the reader, and the OS (of the reader and the sender).
You are saying readers should have full control, without exactly justifying it.
I’m offering up a counter-proposal that the author should have full control (or at least control of the font).
We had this argument with Mark Twain’s use of n*. If authors intent theoretically matters about a word, why not a font? Though obviously a font is less consequential.
I’m not seriously arguing for author-determined fonts, though (see, again, MySpace), but it is worth considering in passing.
As far Samsung or Microsoft forcing a font on us as users, we can probably agree to be against that.
I’m not confused, I’m telling you you are misguided. As an author, you can suggest a font to use. We do this all the time when building web pages by defining styles for a page, but once it reaches a user’s browser it’s in their control.
If you want more control, you will need to pick a different medium. It sounds like pdf might be what you want?