Netscape problems (fwd)

[dmartin at LanCity.COM (Derek Martin)]

On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, Niall Kavanagh wrote:

> One way to get around the tiny font problem is to use one of the truetype
> font servers out there along with your windows fonts. If you don't use
> windows at all, microsoft has kindly put a "web font pack" on their website
> for download.

<SARCHASM>Boy, I feel ingratiated!  THank GOD for Microsoft!  :)
</SARCHASM> 

Yes - I know this is an option, but this is a problem infrequently enough
for me that it isn't worth the effort, though some people may be more
inclined to care.

> The problem isn't netscape (though it's unwillingness to abide by the user's
> preferences is somewhat perplexing?), it's XFree86. It's horrible with
> fonts! Fortunately there are truetype font servers available (check on
> freshmeat.net), and it's being addressed for XFree86 4.0.

Well, this is a problem on all implementations of the X Window System that
I know of, and I'm not even going to attempt to get TrueType fonts working
on a production Solaris or HP box... also not worth the effort, especially
if I royally screw up, which I've been known to do a time or two... :)

> I suppose we could point a finger at the web page authors for not doing some
> simple tests to see what their pages look like under other operating
> systems, but in this case it's somewhat hopeless. Depending on what the end
> user's preferences are, they can easily muck up a well designed page. I've
> been a lot happier with netscape since I started using truetype fonts under
> X.

Agreed... there's no need to blame US (User Stupidity) on the web
developers, but the converse is true also...  Someone with a reasonably
sane configuration (for their own environment) should be able to read web
pages, and the fact is some web pages are designed in such a way to make
this very difficult.  Ever try reading planetquake's web page from a Unix
Netscape client?  Break out the fresnel lenses!

> Side note... using relative font sizes in HTML (<font size="-1">) is FAR
> better than setting absolute sizes (<font size="1">). A relative size tells
> the browser to go "-1" down from the user's preference, where as the
> absolute is just that... an absolute size that may not even be legible in
> the user's browser.

Agreed... I know what they do... but you should know that!


*******************************
|       Derek D. Martin       |
|  UNIX System Administrator  |
| derek.martin at ne.arris-i.com |
*******************************

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