In reply to The Death of Serif Fonts:
although today Armenian is often printed in typefaces with serifs in imitation of Latin and Cyrillic typefaces, it got along for decades with the Bolorgir style of type which had stroke width variation but no serifs.
It's certainly true that many contemporary Armenian fonts -like Sylfaen- have too many serifs (which isn't just an æsthetic problem - it causes readability issues) and that mostly comes directly from Latin (and I guess Cyrillic) type. But traditional Armenian letterforms aren't exactly sans either... They often have what are basically serifs that are in fact so long they often get confused by non-natives for horizontal bars! The key thing to realize is the strong role of slant in Armenian authenticity, and that throws an interesting wrench into the sans-versus-serif debate, as well as the true nature of an optimal "italic" for Armenian. The latter probably remains the single biggest question mark in my own head.
Type has no meaning per se
I would counter that everything has meaning, especially something visible (since the human reality is so strongly dependent on vision).
The present scientific intelligence, as far as I am aware, offers no evidence one way or the other.
Neither does reading entrails, which frankly seems qualitatively equal in scientific rigor to "present scientific intelligence" concerning reading; but that still leaves us with regular intelligence, which points squarely towards serifs helping reading.
hhp
