Do you know of any flared hybrid font that is unicode and supports diacritic marks for Sanskrit transliterations?
That is an intersection of variables I am unfamiliar with. 
I should not have mentioned Sanskrit as a variable because if they are unicode Sanskrit is covered. So the main thing is they should be unicode.
I did a search on MyFonts for “flared sans-serif” with fonts that have over 50,000 glyphs and got a fair number of results. At a quick scan, it looks like these tags are used somewhat liberally—not everything is in the realm of what you are looking for—but there seem to be a good number!
When I am selecting fonts to use, I have several priorities that affect my choices:
1. Today publications are read on screen devices a huge percentage of the time I always want a font that was designed to look good on digital devices. This usually means that the font was designed in the last 10 years, because before that paper was used the bulk of the time. Fonts that work well on screens are a bit “stronger” than those designed for paper.
2. I want fonts with an “open license” such as SIL. This means that I can use them for commercial work and even re-distribute them if necessary.
3. I like fonts that have two or more weights (regular and bold) and they must have italics for each weight. Having three or more weights is a bonus. The extra weights are rarely used within the text, but often come in handy for the cover.
4. The font must have all of the special characters of a Latin-1 font.
5. The fonts MUST have all of the numbers full-height and aligned on the baseline. Nothing looks uglier than having a hierarchal heading number where the numbers wonder all over the baseline when compared to the rest of the heading. I also care about the vertical alignment and size of ®©™. I like it when ® and ™ are smaller and raised like a superscript, since that is the way that they are usually used.
6. I like it when I can find both a Serif and Sans Serif font that were designed to look good together.
7. Above all the font must look good!
If you use Scrivener for iOS, then you MUST remember to install any font used in you project on the iOS device or you will end up reverting the fonts back to Scrivener’s defaults!
My Current Favorites
• Google’s Noto Serif –– (goo.gl/9kTvhA) Is available in two weights with italics. Google has done a great job of seeing that the font is very well populated i.e. no missing glyphs. Missing characters often are displayed as a white rectangle––called a Tofu. The Noto in the font’s name stands for No Tofu.
• Monzilla’s Fira Sans –– (goo.gl/rozfBG) is available in many weights, condensed and all have italics. These fonts are also available as condensed (taller & narrower) form in many weights.
• Monzilla’s Fira Mono –– (goo.gl/S8dA2N) is available in three weights, but no italics.
• Google’s Courgette —(goo.gl/21uvMc) is a really nice handwriting font. Surprisingly this font has most of the Latin-1 character set. It only has one weight and no italic which is common for a handwriting font.
I’m using MS Word 2011 and just found out that it doesn’t like fonts with too many wieghts as can be seen in this thread https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/compile-is-changing-body-fonts/37538/1
Had to disable some options for Word to work. May not be a problem in Word 2016.
On MAC I was using Helvetica Neue, which looks different on Windows; so I switched to Segoe UI. I like it, it’s plain and simple.
I never gave much thought to fonts until recently.
I changed the fonts I had been using (mostly Times New Roman, in a too small size) to Calibri 18 for all my Scrivener screen work. SO much better ! (thanks Karen Price)
Thank you DavidWSnow for that post of yours.
Your logic, and what you are wanting in a font, makes absolute sense to me so I’ll definitely look further into those fonts.
Cheers
I use Freestyle Script size 24, just because it looks like handwriting.
I used Calibri for a very long time, until this topic encouraged me to look for something I liked better. I spent hours trying out different fonts. I spent a few months using Merriweather, which I absolutely love for my schoolwork or anything professional, but don’t like for my fiction writing. I prefer sans serif fonts for that. I just spent another four hours last night hunting through fonts – with viable candidates being Ubuntu, Lato, Open Sans, and Fira Sans, among a few others – but no matter how many I tried, I always found something that I didn’t like about them (Ubuntu, for instance, was rendering w’s strangely in size 10 font, which was the only size that felt right). I was ready to give up and go back to Calibri when I hit on Source Sans Pro. I’m using it now for my creative work and I’m wondering where it’s been all my life.
That said, I have a minor problem now: I want Merriweather for professional work and Source Sans Pro for creative work. Do I have to keep changing the default font through the options menu depending on which I’m working on, or is there an easier and quicker way to switch between default fonts?
First off, I’m a Mac user, so I hope you can do this using the Windows version; if not, you’ll have to wait for v. 3 for Windows
Set up 2 project templates. Open a new project from the template chooser which is nearest to what you want; set the default paragraph style through Options using the font you want for that type of project, and then choose “Save as Template” from the File menu and assign it to an appropriate category. Do the same for your other type of project.
For your existing projects—again, I hope you can do this with the current version—go to ‘Project > Text Preferences…’, tick the “Use different default formatting …” and set the font in the dummy paragraph there. All new documents will then use that; for existing documents, if necessary, ‘Documents > Convert > Convert Formatting to Default Text Style’ is your friend.
HTH
Mark
Thank you very much for your answer! Unfortunately, Windows does not appear to have the ‘Text Preferences’ option. So I suppose I will have to do it the other way. Ah well.
Thank you again!
To bring this topic alive, I am curious if anybody uses Sitka font (Windows). I just discovered it recently, and i think it is excellent for drafting due to its great legibility. Real underrated gem! Any thoughts?
Sorry about the late answer. In Windows Beta 2.9.0.8 it seems it’s Project > Text Settings, not “Text Preferences” as in the Mac version. Simply different nomenclature.
Mark
If you have one project for professional work you can set it up with the styles you want and for any other professional prject you can import the styles from you professional project to all other professional projects. And, you can do the same for creative projects.
Currently I am using Friz-quadrata or Albertus Medium for titles and headings. They are beautiful flared fonts that is between san-serif and serif in that there is no obvious serif but the endings are wider than the body giving them a fluid and classy look.
For body text I am currently using Bhaskerville because it is classy but also because it is Unicode. If you don’t need Unicode (I do) then plenty of classy serif fonts out there.
My philosophy is that if the title and heading is serif then the body text should be sans-serif and vice versa. And that I use a maximum of 3 different fonts in a text preferably only 2.
Whatever may have been true in the past regarding claims that sans-serif was easier to read onscreen over serif fonts is no longer true with the improvement of screen resolutions. And there are several tests recently published to that effect. The choice of font is now only a stylistic preference of the author.
There is even some published research out there to suggest that papers written in fonts like Bhaskerville get higher marks than if the same paper was written in another font. So fonts do make a difference,
So unless you are required to publish your work in a specific font and style sheet let your creativity be expressed by your selection of fonts.
Thanks for the suggestion of Friz-quadrata or Albertus Medium - I’ll look them up.
I’ve also seen some of the research finding no difference between readability of serif and sans-serif typefaces.
Interestingly, RMIT University has recently developed a hard-to-read font that is meant to help with recall and understanding of the material being read. I’m familiar with the concept they reference, so it’s plausible, but I’ve not been able to find any published data on their research and the summary on the university website is sadly lacking (from a research perspective). I think I’ll wait for a little more research before I recommend it to my clients or students but I’ve downloaded it to have a play