Article 81009 of comp.fonts:
From: hedrick@nbcs.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: PMN Caecilia: a nice font for online use
Date: 21 Oct 1998 01:18:15 -0400
Organization: Rutgers University

A couple of weeks ago someone asked about good fonts for documents
intended to be read online.  I mentioned a few typical suspects.  I've
now got another one to add: PMN Caecilia.  Those who read my postings
will know that my passion is finding fonts with good hinting, that
look good on screen.

I reviewed Chaparral when it first came out.  In the course of doing
so I compared to to various other slab serif fonts, among them
PMN Caecilia.  When I did the comparison I was rather unimpessed
with Caecilia.  I've recently changed my mind.

The reason I've changed my mind is that I've gotten better at setting
it.  The problem I had with Caecilia previously is that it looked sort
of gross and disgusting.  It's now clear that this was caused by a
combination of size, leading and tracking.  Caecilia is *very* large
on its body.  It has a fairly large X height. It has rather loose
tracking (i.e. the characters tend to be spaced further apart than in
some other fonts).  To get the equivalent of Janson Text set 11.5 on
13, I have to set PMN Caecilia 10.5 on 13, with tracking tightened by
1% or so.  My problem before is that I was setting it too large,
without enough leading.

Caecilia has several properties that make it useful for me, and I
suspect for others in this group.  It is a slab serif font, with
almost no contrast.  That is, the thickness of the lines has little
variation.  All the serifs are horizontal.  In these respects it's a
"purer" slab serif than fonts such as Chaparral (which has more
variation in line thickness) or Charter (which is almost not a slab
serif at all).  The closest font I've seen is Thesis Serif.

Because of the uniform thickness, it shows up very well on screen.  It
is the only font I've found so far that works equally well with and
without antialiasing.  It's by far my best browser font under X (which
doesn't have antialiasing). It works particularly nicely as a browser
font, because it goes well with Sans Serif fonts, and looks good in the
sorts of page designs that are common.

What's interesting is that while it's a fairly pure monotone font, the
design is very much based on Renaissance designs.  It is not that far
from the samples of Jenson's work I've seen.  (The samples of Jenson's
printing I've seen look closer to a slab serif than most of the modern
interpretations of his type.)  However the X height is considerably
increased.  When I match size and tracking, it is surprisingly similar
to ITC Mendoza. The overall shapes are similar. But it has sharper
edges.  At text sizes you could almost confuse them.  I could imagine
using Caecilia for text and Mendoza for display.

The italic varies slightly more from Renaissance form.  Even there it
is surprisingly similar to Mendoza.  However the g has a more modern
shape, and the v and w are rounded.  The net effect is sort of a cross
between Mendoza italic and Flora.  However I think it's lovely.

So what I like about the font is that it has the readability and style
of a neohumanist font, the usability of a slab serif, and a sharpness
that looks good for technical things.  It's one of the few fonts that
looks reasonable on Rutgers letterhead.  (The Rutgers letterhead uses
Fritz Quadrata and Avant Garde.)

It has one other great feature: it comes with all the pieces.  That
is, there is quite a wide variety of weights, and each weight has
roman and italic regular, OSF and SC.  The OSF fonts are like the
regular but with oldstyle figures in place.  The SC are small caps
fonts.

Thesis Serif seems to share some of the same properties.
Unfortunately I don't have a copy, so I can't do a real comparison.
I've put it on my list to get sometime. From the samples they look
very, very similar, except for the foot serifs on the m and n.
(Caecilia has normal serifs.  Thesis has foot serifs that go only to
one side, and are curved: more like Goudy Sans.)  Like Caecilia,
Thesis is also a very complete family of fonts.  Thesis has the
advantage of having sans and monotype versions.

Another obvious comparison (which I also can't do) is Silica.  However
Caecilia appears to have a somewhat more visible humanist axis than
Silica, and of course is more complete.  (Silica has no Italic and no
SCOSF.)