GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 643871
Date/time in top black panel should stay in the same place when the time changes
Last modified: 2013-04-30 14:42:57 UTC
Since the date/time in the top black panel is centered, small differences in character widgets cause the entire date/time string to shift slightly to the left or right when the minute changes. For example, "Fri Mar 4 1:59 AM" is more narrow than "Fri Mar 4 2:00 AM". This minor horizontal shift can be oddly distracting. I would suggest that there be some kind of threshold where small enough changes in width do not re-center the date/time.
digits are supposed to all be the same width... so this might point to a bug in Cantarell. The reported problem would still happen when going between a 1-digit hour and a 2-digit hour, but I'm not sure what you can do about that.
It seems that in Cantarell Regular, the numerals are all the same width, but in Cantarell Bold (which is what the clock uses) they vary slightly
Created attachment 227806 [details] screenshot showing different number widths As can be seen in the attached screenshot, "1" is not as wide as the other numbers, while "0" is a bit wider.
Bold digits share the same vertical metric for bold in master now. Thanks for reporting.
*** Bug 697912 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***