Re: Test Equation

[Doug Craigen <dcc@ESCAPE.CA>]

Andy Dougherty wrote:
> > When writing <font face="arial"> it is safer to write
> > <font face="arial,helvetica,verdana"> instead.
>
> No, it's actually not safer.  It's potentially worse.  Unix systems
> typically don't have arial, but do have helvetica.  (Verdana is
> Microsoft-specific and not available for Unix for free, last time I
> checked.)  Though both arial and helvetica are sans serif fonts, helvetica
> is considerably narrower. Hence something that looks perfectly readable in
> arial may be squashed very badly together in helvetica and rendered
> unreadable.  This is especially the case if a smaller-than-default font
> size is also used.

I guess that "safe" is in the eyes of the beholder.  I do as little
graphical layout as possible with text, I allow lots of leeway for
wrapping etc.  If the intention was to fill a specific space with text
of a certain size and appearance... good luck!  HTML isn't designed for
that and what you see on your own computer will probably mislead you.
On the other hand, if the intention is simply to display a sans serif
font then helvetica is probably a better second choice than whatever the
default is (usually Times) on any given computer.

\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\

Doug Craigen
          http://www.dctech.com/physics/about_dc.html