Created attachment 107311 [details] Plasma with FreeSans 9 font Since quite a while I was in pursuit for enhancing readability of Plasma. Using default Noto 10px font was not an option on small screen. I'd like to propose GNU FreeSans font as default UI font for plasma. FreeSans font was polished in 2012 and now offers really great look. Advantages are: - closer kerning leading to more "compact" look and better readability - sharper when small - very large letter for size saving precious screen space - keeping great look (reminds Helvetica and San Francisco) when enlarged (HDPI) I've compared default Noto 10px and FreeSans 9px on screenshots. FreeSans is 1px smaller then Noto and is still nearly same size visually.
Created attachment 107312 [details] Plasma with Noto Sans 10 font
The main reason for using Noto was CJK language support.
Personally, I like Noto Sans better. The closer kerning in FreeSans really impacts readability in your screenshot. For the same reason, I'm not real fond of the idea of a smaller font size, either. I agree with you that a smaller, more compact font may be a better idea for small screens, but that's why this is user-configurable. :)
Created attachment 107326 [details] Liberation Sans 9 Take a look @ Liberation Sans 9. It's similar, but kerning is slightly more loose. I've checked, and FreeSans kerning seems to identical on GUI to San Francisco from MacOS Yosemite. Not sure, why they are using so close kerning, but for me words are more "consistent" if you know what I mean. But for sure, it's personal preference. Note: I use, LCD light filter, slight hinting and RGB antialiasing.
FreeSans currently doesn't have competitive Unicode coverage with Noto. The key advantage of Noto is that its wide coverage allows mixing of writing systems in a metrics-compatible way. FreeSans doesn't provide any meaningful advantages to offset the regressions it would introduce on that front.