Originally Posted by Seerah
What damage?
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Hard damage vs. soft coax is an old
VMS figure of speech. Basically it's the difference between changing something "hard", e.g. by moving a file with the same name but a different function over it, or "soft", by writing a new program and having it executed afterwards to override initial values and functions.
So in this case its the difference between overriding the whole of /fonts (by placing a directory into the file system to override the VFS versions) or simply programmatically altering what font the UI uses for what function.
"Damage" to me, in so far, that you're really getting into the bowels of the UI. I personally just prefer the more fine-grained (and, by virtue of enabling/disabling an addon instead of having to instate and remove a folder, easier to switch) version.
This also benefits situations in which two authors have different ideas of what a good font should be. In the case where author A replaces ARIALN.ttf with her own truetype font (oftentimes using different kerning and hinting than the default font) but maintains, say, FRIZQT__.TTF, while author B wants to replace FRIZQT__.TTF and maintain ARIALN, we're at an impasse. It's hard for the user to discern which ones are the "original" fonts and which ones have been replaced, etc, and even harder to mediate between two authors wanting to replace all or some fonts.
The addon method just gives that flexibility much easier. Not to mention, access to more font faces or a chance at lowering the amount of faces in the UI (which is what I did, for example).