Best font selection for a menu?

Scripsit Andy Dingley:

On 24 Sep, 20:59, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp... (AT) cs (DOT) tut.fi> wrote:

Thus, at least when taken as a general statement, Andy's claim
"Why specify Times and Times New Roman together? The synonym
mechanisms will merge those."
was not correct, in CSS authoring, even if we limit ourselves to the
Windows world.

Perhaps not, but it's (as ever) a pragmatic approach.

What else are you going to do? Specify _every_ variant naming of "TNR/
Times/New/Roman/Rmn/Ramen" to try and make one stick?

No, the point is that Times New Roman and Times (or Times Roman) can be
different fonts. Of course it's a confusing game, and there is variation
even under one name, perhaps more than between them. But it's still a
meaningful idea to suggest, say,

font-family: Times, Times New Roman

What I expect to get is a Times font designed by Linotype, when available,
and Times New Roman, a Microsoft font, otherwise (and more often). This
makes sense if Times is regarded as somewhat better, and this is at least a
defendable position.

(Font name issues are boring, but see
http://www.truetype-typography.com/articles/times.htm
if you're interested.)

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:22:38 +0300, "Jukka K. Korpela"
<jkorpela (AT) cs (DOT) tut.fi> wrote:

What else are you going to do? Specify _every_ variant naming of "TNR/
Times/New/Roman/Rmn/Ramen" to try and make one stick?

No, the point is that Times New Roman and Times (or Times Roman) can be
different fonts.

Of course. But they're _unknowably_ dfifferent, if we assume "the web"
rather than some controlled intranet.

it's still a meaningful idea to suggest, say,

font-family: Times, Times New Roman

But what does that mean? Can you have a consistent expectation of this?
Can you have that expectation for another set of font names?

What I expect to get is a Times font designed by Linotype, when available,
and Times New Roman, a Microsoft font, otherwise (and more often).

I would suggest that this is over-optimistic, when aimed at "the web" in
general. Times Roman is an unusual "best case" here, in that there is
at least some degree of meaning to the variants (the Linotype / Monotype
case back in the Paleolithic era). Even then, Adobe isn't the same as
Apple, but (AFAIR) the names overlap from their shared origin.

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Besides, I just checked the settings in my current computer. Regedit tells
that there are mappings for Times and Helvetica, as you wrote (though not for
Courier). Yet, when I test an HTML document where I set font-family in CSS,
text set to Helvetica is different from text set to Arial (though similar),
and ditto for Times and Times New Roman.

How different is "different"? View the string

1 %

in Arial, Helvetica, Times, Times New Roman. The digit one should be
different in Arial/Helvetica; the percent sign should be different
in Times/Times New Roman.
http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/F/...-10005000.html
http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/F/...-10005000.html
http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/F/...-10005000.html

Scripsit Andy Dingley:

No, the point is that Times New Roman and Times (or Times Roman) can
be different fonts.

Of course. But they're _unknowably_ dfifferent, if we assume "the web"
rather than some controlled intranet.

That applies to pairs of font names in general. This case is actually
relatively well predictable. But you can stop using font-family altogether
if you like. :-) (You cannot really _know_ even about a single font that it
looks the same on other people's browsers as yours. But you may decide not
to take this too seriously.)

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/