Standard font for technical documentation

[Lizak, Samantha]

Hi Mathieu-

There has been a whole lot of research on this. If you are looking
at reading quality, more important factors are kerning, leading, and
line length.  Also, the age and background of the readers has a 
significant effect. (For example, in a study published in the early
1990s, researchers found that European readers generally preferred
sans serif and North American (probably just USA) readers preferred
serif, all other things being equal.) 

That said, all the companies (admittedly, large ones) have specified
the type faces to be used.  Generally it has been Times or Times New
Roman for print, with Arial or Helvetica for headings.  I can't recall
what my prior employer used online, but my current one specifies Helvetica
and Arial for online help, with Courier (a fixed-width font) for the
code examples.  For PDF (we don't really do paper any more) the default
font is Times at 12 pt. Given our readers average 40+ years old, have
high-resolution displays, generally are working on a Unix-based computer,
and are accustomed to lots of reading, the choice is appropriate. I
sure wouldn't use it for something meant for a younger audience, though.

My _personal_ preference leans to the new MS fonts (Cambria, I think it 
was) that were released with Vista, based on having edited two papers
that used them and from an IEEE Spectrum article about the research involved
in their creation. I have not personally used the fonts (not available on
my older system), but the two documents did seem especially clear on screen 
without being distractingly different.

Regards-

Sam.


-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of mathieu jacquet
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2009 1:57 AM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Standard font for technical documentation


Dear all,
is there any "standard font" for writing Getting Started guides, User Manuals and other technical documents? Which one do you personnally use? Do you find that some fonts offer a better "reading quality" than others?
Thank you very much in anticipation.
Yours sincerely,
Mathieu.


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