Netscape problems (fwd)

[Niall Kavanagh]

One way to get around the tiny font problem is to use one of the truetype
font servers out there along with your windows fonts. If you don't use
windows at all, microsoft has kindly put a "web font pack" on their website
for download.

The problem isn't netscape (though it's unwillingness to abide by the user's
preferences is somewhat perplexing?), it's XFree86. It's horrible with
fonts! Fortunately there are truetype font servers available (check on
freshmeat.net), and it's being addressed for XFree86 4.0.

I suppose we could point a finger at the web page authors for not doing some
simple tests to see what their pages look like under other operating
systems, but in this case it's somewhat hopeless. Depending on what the end
user's preferences are, they can easily muck up a well designed page. I've
been a lot happier with netscape since I started using truetype fonts under
X.

Side note... using relative font sizes in HTML (<font size="-1">) is FAR
better than setting absolute sizes (<font size="1">). A relative size tells
the browser to go "-1" down from the user's preference, where as the
absolute is just that... an absolute size that may not even be legible in
the user's browser.

Niall

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Derek Martin [mailto:dmartin at LanCity.COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 1999 12:59 PM
> To: jc at eddie.mit.edu
> Cc: discuss at Blu.Org; sstirlin at gis.net
> Subject: Re: Netscape problems (fwd)
> 
> 
> On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, John Chambers,,,781-647-1813 wrote:
> 
> > The actual reason I'd like to use it is that I normally 
> like  to  use
> > rather  small fonts, so I can see several things on the 
> screen at the
> > same time.  People are always complaining  about  the  fact 
>  that  my
> > screen  is unreadable because of my small fonts.  But this 
> means that
> > if a document comes with <font size=-4>, my already-small  
> fonts  are
> > reduced  to a 3x2 font, which is unreadable on any screen.  
> So I have
> > to go into the Preferences, change the font size to  
> something  huge,
> 
> Well, if I recall correctly, that feature only applies to 
> relative font
> sizes.  The reason for this is that Netscape wants to be able 
> to render
> the page more or less the way the author intended it, 
> whatever your fonts
> are... Send your web developer a note thanking him/her for 
> making their
> web page absolutely illegible to the Unix community, and/or those with
> High-res displays, by not taking the time to see what their pages look
> like on non-windows machines.  I have had this complaint about several
> websites myself.
> 
> Every book or document about writing good HTML that I have 
> read has said
> NOT to do this kind of thing... yet everybody does it anyway.
> 
> Oh well, just deal with it I guess.
> 
> *******************************
> |       Derek D. Martin       |
> |  UNIX System Administrator  |
> | derek.martin at ne.arris-i.com |
> *******************************
> 
> 
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