I’m a truebeliever in readability. Gentium is the most beautiful and legible typefaces I’ve discovered. I use Gentium Book Basic. I see Gentium Book Basic Plus files are significantly larger than the basic files. For my small low traffic blog do I gain any legibility I need by using the Plus version of the typeface?
I don’t think this is a legibility issue. Rather, the question is if you and the people who write replies ever use characters (letters, currency and other symbols, etc.) that are covered by Gentium Plus but not by Gentium Basic. See Character Set Support - Gentium - Gentium for details of character coverage.
Okay, thanks for your reply. Perhaps I should try to delete this post so it does not take up meaningless space in the community. I thank you for pointing it out, though.
Hi John - Lili is right. The main differences between Basic and Plus are an increased character set (including Cyrillic and Greek) and more OpenType features. You may not need those extras in Plus.
However our latest (v6.101) Gentium Plus fonts (including Book) have improved hinting, which may look clearer on screen than the v5-based Basic fonts. We’re not planning on making v6-based Basic fonts because the latest WOFF2 versions of Plus are much, much smaller than the earlier ones., meaning that v6 Plus WOFF2 meet most needs.
I’d suggest you give the v6 Plus WOFFs a try and compare the on screen appearance. We’re seeing a significant improvement, but it depends on the browser, OS, type size, etc.