I don't see a huge visual difference, so it seems good. Do we know if this would look bad in any other apps or situations?

Display is definitely clearer on my screens, It really starts to become noticeable at size 12.

+1 From me it's definitely easier on the eyes

+1
This actually somewhat improved the issue where the number of unread notifications in the system tray was uncentered. Here's a comparison:

Noto Sans

Other numbers such as 3 don't see much of a difference.
Noto Sans

1. Are we sure that all the KDE-using distros are packaging this variant?
2. Looks like it's a little bit narrower than the current font. I wonder if we could bump up the size to 11 in conjunction with this, since to my eyes the text is even smaller. Maybe 11 pt Noto Sans Display would work better than 11 pt Noto Sans did the last time we tried it.
3. How does it look in the various places where we currently have kerning issues? Better/worse?

Also make sure to always add groups to the subscribers list too. Phab doesn't send notifications for tags, only subscribers.

In T10980#186347, @ngraham wrote:

1. Are we sure that all the KDE-using distros are packaging this variant?

They do:

• Arch: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/noto-fonts/files/
• Ubuntu: https://packages.ubuntu.com/disco/all/fonts-noto-core/filelist
• Debian: https://packages.debian.org/buster/all/fonts-noto-core/filelist
• OpenSUSE: https://software.opensuse.org/package/noto-sans-display-fonts
• Fedora: https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/google-noto-sans-display-fonts

In T10980#186347, @ngraham wrote:

2. Looks like it's a little bit narrower than the current font. I wonder if we could bump up the size to 11 in conjunction with this, since to my eyes the text is even smaller. Maybe 11 pt Noto Sans Display would work better than 11 pt Noto Sans did the last time we tried it.

Then everything would be a bit bigger in general, but I think it's ok:

In T10980#186347, @ngraham wrote:

How does it look in the various places where we currently have kerning issues? Better/worse?

Should be about the same.

This font is somewhat oddly narrow i.e. tall. Since I don't use hinting I guess the narrowness is most pronounced in my case. As hinting off = the closest we can get to the original design of the typeface, it's a bit odd that a font designed for high DPI phone screens would have nicer geometry with hinting. With hinting on it looks a bit better than Noto Sans. In general using UI variants is obviously preferable. So +1 ... I'd prefer if we could find a a font with more personality though, but that's still easier said than done.

As for 11pt as the default size, the right solution here is probably the same one we reached the last time: that scaling (or font size) should be automatically set based on the size of the screen and its resolution. 11pt will most likely look too big on normal, non-laptop screens, but sadly I can't test that anytime soon.

@hein said this in D21429:

I'm not sold on this. "Display" fonts typically have spacing and metrics optimized for large sizes and use cases like signage. The FAQ entry quoted in the task you linked talks about Noto Sans UI. I'd like some more solid documentation on how Display relates to this "UI" cut or something from upstream.

It looks like it is just narrower: https://github.com/googlefonts/noto-fonts/issues/1056

A display typeface is a typeface optimized for large headings and billboards.
So the term "display" has nothing to do with computer displays.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_typeface

This may be a case of unfortunate naming, but I'm mentioning it anyway just so we know what we are doing.

TBH I don't really like how narrow the glyphs are. All the text feels narrow and cramped now. I'm not sold either.