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Originally posted in UserExperience, they recommended I post it here.

The application I'm working on has been around for over 20 years now, and in some cases still has not updated the UI in some places - the font is one of them, as it uses MS Sans Serif.

I am trying to find a more modern alternative that would fulfill some criteria:

  • it is a business application, and numerical readability is primordial
  • the average character width would need to be similar to that of MS Sans Serif, to avoid text overlap of nearby UI controls (or applying a full application redesign, several million lines of code)
  • some of the clients being in Arab countries, the above 2 criteria would need to apply for Arabic characters as well
  • for Arabic characters, they mustn't look 'modernized' (Tahoma, - even Segoe UI - fails here)
  • optimally, the font would be built-in to Windows (unless there are no such satisfactory fonts)
  • to make matters a little more difficult, the average character width would also need to be maintained when applying Windows scaling (meaning the font height gets scaled, by say, 1.25x or 1.5x)

I've tried a few dozen fonts, none of which seems to satisfy the (admittedly) complex requirements above. Closest i found was something called "Gadugi" which i had never heard of before.

Has anyone faced anything like this? Or are there any tools to help find other fonts with same average char width to narrow down the filtering for us? Finally, any other source of fonts outside of Windows defaults, or anything that may put me in the right direction?

Edit:

i've added a screenshot of MS Sans Serif (up) vs Microsoft Sans Serif (down) for various font sizes, both in English and Arabic.

Few things can be noticed:

  • odd sizes for MS Sans Serif don't scale (seems the font is not defined). For those same sizes, Microsoft Sans Serif seems 'vertically compressed'. Could it be that it's not defined as well, and just stretched horizontally?
  • in size 9 Arabic, the text actually shrank. How could this be?
  • in Arabic, sizes 8 and 10 look normal, but for other sizes, the font gradually changes, as if it is falling back to some kind of default.

Due to how Windows scaling works (internally, it scales the font height, not the size), I may end up on various monitors with these various font sizes, hence the comparison.

Do these points make any sense? and what can I do about them?

font differences

Thanks again!

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    Have you tried Microsoft Sans Serif, which confusingly is not the same font but rather a TrueType version based on the original? I'm not sure if that's considered "modern" enough given that it's basically the same typeface, though. Commented Dec 2, 2020 at 11:31
  • @LionelRowe thanks for the suggestion! i have tried it just now, and it's looking very promising overall. I've added a screenshot with some edits, and some questions to points I haven't understood / trying to solve. As for what I mean by "modern", please have a look at size 14 Arabic, the difference between MS Sans Serif (up) and Microsoft Sans Serif (down): in the bottom one, some letters are off in the way they are designed, somehow vertically stretched (e.g. the last letter of the 3rd word coming from the right, and a few others). Seems the font was entirely changed? Commented Dec 2, 2020 at 14:49
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    For one thing, font substitution is coming into play. MS Sans Serif (the old bitmap .fon) did not come in Arabic. Apparently in the old bitmap-font days, Windows use Arabic versions of the System and FixedSys bitmap fonts for Arabic UI. Your modern Windows must be substituting some Arabic TrueType font for MS Sans Serif. Also, Gadugi is a Cherokee font, not Arabic, so a substitution is occuring there, too. Commented Dec 4, 2020 at 3:53
  • @DavidLasher that's definitely good insight that i had no idea about, thanks for that! Is there any way to confirm the substitution font? Commented Dec 5, 2020 at 23:43

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