[scribus] How to tell a font is print worthy?

[Jean Basile]

I have read quite a few of the wiki texts on scribus related to fonts. And it does make sense that a 200$ font pack should offer some more features than a freeware font downloaded from some shady site. And those features hold something more than just the signing hand - a seasoned typographer or font creator as opposed to somebody with little to no experience trying to have some fun than sharing his achievement with the World. Although the latter has a worthy goal, the years of experience should make a notable difference.

On the outside the free fonts usually lack characters beyond ASCII or Latin 1, they pack only a limited set (bold, italic, maybe bold-italic). But apart from these outside features what to look for when evaluating a font? Just printing at a few sizes might not be a good idea as it seems that a good font still might be a bad idea to use at certain sizes.

Is there anything measurable, or it's down to years of looking at printed pages that one develops a certain feeling towards some qualities of a printed letter?