What fonts are equivalent on different platforms?

On 2006-07-12, Andy Dingley <dingbat (AT) codesmiths (DOT) com> wrote:

Avoid Verdana. Verdana is an evil font that lies about its size.

That is not true. Fonts sizes are specified by their vertical
height from the top of the highest ascender to the bottom of the
lowest descender. A font may appear larger if it has a larger "x
height" (the height of a lowercase 'x'), but the difference is not
enough to make the font difficult to read.

As a result you just can't use it in conjunction with other fonts -
you'd see noticeably bad size inconsistencies if you ever used the
CSS fallback.

Only if you hard-code your widths.

If you must use Verdana, then use it alone.
As Verdana is also a poor typeface (i.e. the shape, ignoring the size
issues), then there's really no need to use it at all.

It's not a bad face at all. I prefer Helvetica, but Verdana is also
attractive.

--
Chris F.A. Johnson, author <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
===== My code in this post, if any, assumes the POSIX locale
===== and is released under the GNU General Public Licence

"axlq" <axlq (AT) spamcop (DOT) net> wrote

No. I'm referring to the bitmap screenshots, which are OS independent.
See the differing appearances of Helvetica on

http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/i...-ClearType.png
for example. I suspect that the Mac which generated that screenshot had
some Microsoft fonts installed.

Yes, there is no doubt about it. Look at the Verdana and Tahoma. They are
definitely not Geneva, nor is the Trebuchet Helvetica. That makes the
comparison pretty useless.

Arial and Helvetica fonts appear to have exactly the same size characters.
The Arial terminals (e.g. the ends of the letter C) are not horizontal as
Helvetica's are, the arm of the r is different, and the cap G and R have
very noticable differences. I think the resolution of the screenshots is too
low to see which is which without a cap G or R.

See what I mean here:

http://www.hpaa.com/css1/fontsample.gif

Daibhidh

"Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajohnson (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

On 2006-07-12, Andy Dingley <dingbat (AT) codesmiths (DOT) com> wrote:

Avoid Verdana. Verdana is an evil font that lies about its size.

That is not true. Fonts sizes are specified by their vertical
height from the top of the highest ascender to the bottom of the
lowest descender. A font may appear larger if it has a larger "x
height" (the height of a lowercase 'x'), but the difference is not
enough to make the font difficult to read.

That is also not true. Within a font's bounding box there is usually a bit
of space above and below the tallest ascender and deepest descender. Verdana
has less space above and below its tallest ascender and deepest descender
than Arial does. It also has a taller x-height.

There are other fonts that are big for their size. Helvetica Inserat and
Block Berthold, for example, have a much taller x-height for their size than
Verdana. And there are fonts - oldstyle and formal scripts especially - that
are very small for their size.

Note that in most fonts, accented characters such as Aacute (Á) extend above
the font bounding box. See where the Aacute accent falls when you specify
font-face: Verdana and line-height: 1. It's up among the descenders of the
previous line.

Daibhidh

axlq wrote:

I did find http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html
but the page shows them all rendered as Windows fonts.

That's because for each line of text, the webpage author lists a
"windows" font first, followed by a mac font, followed by the generic.
If you have neither the specified "windows" font nor the specified
"Mac" font installed, you'll see the whole line of text in whatever
you've selected for your browser's default serif or sans-serif or
monospaced font.

General comment: Aaargghhh!

That page represents a great deal of what's wrong. In a page that's
intended to help display web text selection, it does a crappy job.

Because the page uses text instead of graphics, everyone will see the
page differently, depending on what fonts THEY have installed. (Note:
This does NOT depend on their operating system. PC Users CAN have
Geneva, Helvetica, etc., and MAC users can have Tahoma, Verdana, et al)

A good example is the three words "Geneva" in the left-hand column.

I DON'T have Geneva installed, so what I see depends on the sequence
of fonts the author of the page specified for each line.

The first appearance, in the line "Tahoma, Geneva, Sans-Serif" uses
Tahoma to display the line, including the word "Geneva" because what's
specified is "font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif"

The last one (on MY display) has a spur on the "G" - because what's
specified is "font-family: MS Sans Serif, Geneva, sans-serif" Since I
have MS Sans Serif (as a bitmap font), that's what I see the word
"Geneva" in.

This also explains why so many posters in this thread are saying "I
don't see it that way; or Arial=Helvetica (which it doesn't) or "the
Helveticas look different".

What that page attempts to show is a couple of fonts in each category
that most users might reasonably be expected to have on their system.
It does NOT claim that the selections on each line are in any way
equivalent, just that they're somewhat similar. Text will NOT look
identical, it may not flow the same way, and may not even have the
same characters available!

- Character

"Daibhidh" <no.replies (AT) no (DOT) where> wrote

font-face: Verdana ...

Arg. I meant: font-family: Verdana. But y'all knew that, I hope!

In article <yYetg.197707$lC7.144257 (AT) fe01 (DOT) news.easynews.com>,
Character <Char (AT) cter (DOT) drop.cap> wrote:

axlq wrote:
I did find http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html
but the page shows them all rendered as Windows fonts.

"Mac" font installed, you'll see the whole line of text in whatever
you've selected for your browser's default serif or sans-serif or
monospaced font.

General comment: Aaargghhh!

That was my reaction after I figured out what was going on.

The same is true for the bitmap images of the Mac displays. The Mac
used obviously had some Windows fonts on it.

-A

axlq (AT) spamcop (DOT) net (axlq) writes:

The same is true for the bitmap images of the Mac displays. The Mac
used obviously had some Windows fonts on it.

If you're referring to the so-called "web fonts" from MS, those are shipping
with the OS these days - have been since Mac OS X 10.0, IIRC. With the near-
universal adoption of OS X, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a Mac user
who *doesn't* have those fonts.

sherm--

--
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Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

Andreas Prilop wrote:

On Wed, 12 Jul 2006, axlq wrote:

Second:
Arial looks no more like Helvetica than Terence Hill looks like
Franco Nero.

Wrong! Arial is a copy of Helvetica see this...
http://central.kaserver5.org/Kasoft/...nts/Arial.html

Yours in joy
Steve
www.fontmadness.com
"In the jungle of the senses"

"Sherm Pendley" <sherm (AT) Sherm-Pendleys-Computer (DOT) local> wrote

axlq (AT) spamcop (DOT) net (axlq) writes:

For myself, I'm beginning to wonder about the wisdom of running a 17" CRT
at 1280x1024. :-\

I recommend you change to 1280x960, at least if your monitor is 4:3 in
shape. That way things that are meant to be square will be square (not
rectangluar) and circles will be circles (not ellipses).

Also, contrary to popular belief, I'm sure CRTs do actually have a native
resolution, at least in one direction (some in two directions). Just dig out
a magnifying glass and count the number of phosphorus stripe triplets.
Alternitivley, measure the visible width of your screen, and divide by the
dot pitch.

As for cleartype and its equivalents, if you have stripes of phosphorus
(aperture grille) then you can probably use this, as the mapping should then
be the same as on an LCD. If you don't have stripes, but instead have a kind
of honeycomb grid layout (Shadow mask), then sub-pixel rendering systems
probably won't work so well, but you can always campain to
microsoft/apple/some open source people to get the appropriate adjustments
made to the system.

"Sherm Pendley" <sherm (AT) Sherm-Pendleys-Computer (DOT) local> wrote

axlq (AT) spamcop (DOT) net (axlq) writes:

The same is true for the bitmap images of the Mac displays. The Mac
used obviously had some Windows fonts on it.

If you're referring to the so-called "web fonts" from MS, those are
shipping
with the OS these days - have been since Mac OS X 10.0, IIRC. With the
near-
universal adoption of OS X, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a Mac
user
who *doesn't* have those fonts.

This gives me an idea. How about a page that shows fonts in order of the
market share they reach (based on the OSes or software they come with), and
which can be filtered to show only what the potential designer currently
has. That way I can choose a font that looks nice, and is likely to look the
same to lots of people. I can then also choose a good fallback font so that
almost everyone sees a site nearly as pretty, and a generic so that everyone
can see the site in something at least useable.