[thelist] Font Size

Bertilo Wennergren bertilow at gmx.net
Fri Sep 27 16:33:16 CDT 2002


Chris Evans:

> Bertilo Wennergren wrote:

>> Except that you should never ever set the basic font size to anything
>> else than 100% or 1em.

> What about the instance where the "base font" is bigger than "standard"?
>   For example, Arial and TimesRoman have different base sizes, at least
> Arial looks bigger on my machine than Times Roman.  I often reduce Arial
> font sizes so that font sizes are fairly consistent as far as height.

That does not matter, since you can't be sure that the font you indicate
will be used at all. If you write "Font X", and give the font size as
"75%" since "Font X" is unusually large (in your experience), and the
user has set font names to be ignored, and instead sees the text with
"Font Y" (his default) that happens to be unusually smallish, then the
text will be unreadable due to the setting "75%".

You'll just have to work from the assumption that "100%" is the correct
size for basic text.

And even if "Font X" is present in the user's system, and being used for
the page display, there is no guarantee the the version of "Font X" that
the user has, looks like the one you have. "Font X" ("Arial", "Times New
Roman"...) are just names. A font with a certain name can actually have
any look and any size.

> Admittedly, usually its only a few pixels, but I still think its a valid
> reason to modify font sizes.

Sorry. No.

--
Bertilo Wennergren <bertilow at gmx.net> <http://www.bertilow.com>




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