Description: The current default fonts for Writer, Impress ... is too ugly. Noto fonts is completely open source and high coverage for unicode. It would be nice to use Noto fonts as default fonts for Writer and the other LibreOffice tools. Steps to Reproduce: Check the default setting on a freshly installed LibreOffice instance. Actual Results: Currently, The default western fonts are Liberation Sans for Heading, and Liberation Serif for the others. The default Asian fonts are Noto Sans CJK SC for Heading and Cantarell for the others. Expected Results: It would be nice to change the default western fonts as Noto Sans for Heading, and Noto Serif for the others. The default Asian fonts as Noto Sans CJK SC for Heading, and Noto Serif CJK SC for the others. Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: This would make LibreOffice looks consistency.
There is a distinction to be made between fonts bundled with LibreOffice installers, and what fonts are used by default for user's profile or found in the document templates (and to a lesser extent the UI). We've bundled Noto fonts (though just a subset since 6.0 for bug 103080) and dropped some unsupported fonts (bug 136604), so feasible to expand the Noto* bundling for l10n, or alternatively to provide via appropriate langpack or extension mechanism. However there would be interoperability issues moving "default" away from profile default Liberation templates, or the C* fonts. That has been the bigger concern when past suggestions for change have come up. Seems less of an issue now as shellnew templates are now 0-byte and so also pickup defaults from user profile [1]. But folks needing to interoperate using OOXML, i.e. with MS Office, are not well served. =-ref-= [1] bug 139991 and bug 139962
For bug 114746 the Impress bundled presentation templates all got Noto Sans for CJK and CTL user locales with https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/155659 wef at the 24.2.0 release. So only the Western template styles retain the Liberation Sans fonts. I guess a bit more justification to adopt Noto Sans there as well?
Liberation is compatible with Arial, Courier New, and Times New Roman. And while Windows does not use those font anymore, it breaks the layout if you open a legacy document without the font. And LibreOffice aims for compatibility. The summary should rather be "Use Noto family fonts as default fonts for documents".
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3) > Liberation is compatible with Arial, Courier New, and Times New Roman. And > while Windows does not use those font anymore, it breaks the layout if you > open a legacy document without the font. And LibreOffice aims for > compatibility. > Not suggesting that the Liberation Sans, Mono, or Serif <==> Arial, Courier New, Times New Roman equivalencies be eliminated. Liberation fonts should still be bundled, just not preferred as defaults in templates for any locale. Their Unicode coverage has been lacking and our i18n suffers by holding on to them as defaults. In addition to elevating Noto in templates, the VCL.xcu could better promote them by locale. The UI work needed for bug 61134 and bug 96872 would greatly improve the compatibility and interoperability UX dealing with font fallback issues. > The summary should rather be "Use Noto family fonts as default fonts for > documents". Done.
> The current default fonts for Writer, Impress ... is too ugly For which languages do you believe it's too ugly? Also, you need to be more specific about the sense in which you believe it is ugly. I don't find the fonts for Latin languages, Hebrew and Arabic to be ugly. > It would be nice to use Noto 1. "Nice" in what sense? 2. How are Noto fonts superior to all other options (not just the current choices? 3. I'm against adopting Google's fonts, on principle, as our defaults. This goes against our interest in promoting corporation-independent design and creation, of software and of artisanal creations like fonts.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3) > Liberation is compatible with Arial, Courier New, and Times New Roman. And > while Windows does not use those font anymore, it breaks the layout if you > open a legacy document without the font. And LibreOffice aims for > compatibility. > > The summary should rather be "Use Noto family fonts as default fonts for > documents". I think that broad compatibility with Microsoft office is essential for the billions of documents used worldwide. I personally have zero issue with the default fonts and do not find them ugly. If anything isn't in the best interests of Linux and Mac users to default to the liberation fonts? They might not be default in Office but they are still very broadly used and in every shipping version of Windows since Vista. In this theme do we have metric compatible versions of the default Microsoft fonts that should be in the install by default?
We discussed the topic in the design meeting. Fonts are a very subjective matter. Liberation is kind of a trademark, and Google artwork not an ideal open source solution. So we decided to keep the current default. Feel free to reopen if you have substantial backup for the idea.