Netscape problems (fwd)

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers,,,781-647-1813)]

Scott Stirling <sstirlin at gis.net> writes:
	"John Chambers,,,781-647-1813" wrote:
	> This is something I've done routinely, but so far  I've  never  found
	> any  version  of  Netscape  on any machine that honors it.  I've also
	> found that setting the font size to 18 or 24 points  doesn't  usually
	> affect those tiny fonts at all; it only seems to affect text in which
	> the page doesn't set the font size.  But if the page  sets  the  font
	> size,  then  Netscape  always  honors the page's font size, no matter
	> what I do with my settings.

	Well, try my tried and true settings and see what happens.  ...
    ...
	Sometimes a document will provide its own fonts
	< > . . .
	< > . . .
	<x> Use document-specified fonts, including dynamic fonts 

Uh, this does exactly the opposite of what I (and the other fellow)
was asking.  You say to use the document's fonts.  That has always
worked.  What I want to know is how to make the first of the three
choices work:
    <x> Use my default fonts, overriding document-specified fonts

When I check this, it has no effect whatsoever.   Everything  on  the
page  looke  exactly  as before, with a mixture of font sizes.  If it
were honoring this checkbox, you'd think that  all  the  fonts  would
come  out  the  same size, namedly the size that I've selected above.
But they don't, and some of the fonts are still  tiny,  even  when  I
select  a huge font size.  It appears that this options is simply not
implemented at all.

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,
read  that bit of text, and then switch back to a smaller font.  This
makes reading such pages rather  tedious  and  time  consuming.   And
sometimes  it doesn't even work, with a size-24 font choice producing
text that is still in a 3x2 font size.  If Netscape would just  honor
the  "Use my default fonts" choice and ignore <font> tags, everything
would  become  readable.   But  this  appears  to  be  either   never
implemented or broken in all versions of Netscape.

I've also worked with some visually-impaired people who have the same
sort of complaint.  They use large default fonts, of course. But some
pages come up with part of their text tiny and  unreadable  (even  by
me). It seems that someone at Netscape had the good idea of providing
an option to turn off font resizing.  At least, it would  be  a  good
idea if it worked.  But it doesn't seem to work. It does seem strange
that they'd keep this option in the Preferences if they  hadn't  ever
implemented  it, so I'm guessing that they actually did implement it,
and there's something that is overriding it  somewhere.   Maybe  some
other option on some other list in another window.  Anyone know?

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