I don't know about the "algorithms" they use but having the prepress background that I do I can tell how many other programs behave. I regularly have to take Word files and make them press ready. I convert it to a format I can open in Illustrator and when I do what I see is multiple instances of the bold type. Word will keep the real text and then place at least two duplicates on top; one offset maybe .2 points up and left the other down and right. I've seen as little as two and as many as four. I would assume that IE would behave similarly to other Microsoft products.
I don't think there's a whole lot of work the browsers have to do, but I don't know specifically what the browsers do. In your font directory you will have all your fonts and the system knows if there is a bold face. You might have: Times Times, Bold Times, Italic Times, BoldItalic TimesExtraBold TimesExtraBold, Italic You can bold this version of Times. If you want it bolder you have to manually change the type to TimesExtraBold because the system doesn't know that the next weight heavier than Times, Bold should really be TimesExtraBold. Those are two separate typefaces with no connection as far as the OS is concerned. I would be concerned if indeed Safari & Gecko actually replace a font I want with another because it can't find a heavy enough, or italic, instance. If I'm specifying Times I expect to see Times and not Garamond or Palatino. Mike -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Philippe Wittenbergh Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 10:47 PM To: CSS-D Subject: Re: [css-d] IE7 - [SOLVED] no bold text in unordered list It is a bit more complicated. Most browsers on Windows will attempt to find a bold face for the specified font. If not available, they will using some algorithms to artificially bold the specified font. On Mac Safari, and in the future Gecko, the browser will look first for a bold face in the specified font-family, lacking that, they will look for a substitute font eventually, or eventually artificially bold out the font-face. The same goes for italics. Philippe --- Philippe Wittenbergh ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d IE7 information -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=IE7 List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
