@0xabad1dea my wife's uni course has a hard lower limit of 9pt for all work, including image captions, and if you go smaller those parts are voided and will not be marked. effective!

@gsuberland @0xabad1dea honestly (outside research summary posters), I'd say 12 hard minimum, ideally 14.
And I'm comparing TNR or Verdana or something, since font families vary glyph sizes.

@MxVerda @0xabad1dea the main reason it's set low is that it gives folks leeway with figure labelling done in external software required by the course (which can't always have its font size adjusted). by the time you've resized the image to fit in A4 you often end up right on the limit of 9pt.

@gsuberland   wtf kind of janky shitware can't -- wait, no. Do I want to know? Is this cursèd knowledge I will ache to rescind? @0xabad1dea

@MxVerda @0xabad1dea astronomy and spectroscopy software. it's the intersection of physicists, academics, and 90s open source devs, none of which have the slightest clue how to design a usable a UI.

@gsuberland @0xabad1dea oh noooooo. Idk the exact stuff (I was more into particle physics and cosmology in abstract, not astro), but that sucks.
... I could find the code maintainers and write them a strongly worded letter?
I expect they wouldn't want a rando submitting bug reports and user testing, but I can always offer.
(I have done bug testing before, and was apparently quite thorough. The lead software dude loved it. The business managers Did Not.)