2009/9/21 Philippe Wittenbergh <[email protected]>: > > On Sep 21, 2009, at 11:48 AM, Felix Miata wrote: > >> Windows special cases CSS requests for Helvetica. All instances of >> helvetica >> in CSS are treated by the OS as if had been written arial instead. >> Furthermore, Arial is the OS-wide browser default sans-serif font, >> and what >> both IE and Safari will use (even on Mac) if any combination of only >> Helvetica, Arial and/or sans-serif are the only items in a font- >> family rule >> stack. Apparently Safari & IE only use the pref setting in the >> absence of any >> CSS. In contrast, sans-serif to a Gecko means use the pref anytime >> sans-serif >> is requested by a rule stack, in addition to when there is no font- >> family >> CSS. > > That is _not_ correct as far as Safari Mac is concerned (I don't have > Helvetica installed on my Windoze VMs). > 1. Safari on OS X has 'Helvetica' as default sans-serif font (for > Western languages). > 2. When 'Helvetica' is requested, 'Helvetica' is used. > 3. The thing Safari does, again on OS X, is matching the font-metrics > of Helvetica to the ones of Arial (and idem ditto for Times/Times New > Roman, Courier/Courier New) - for some webcompat reasons. For example, > Arial has a slightly bigger 'normal' line-height than Helvetica, but > Safari uses the line-height from Arial. > > testcase: http://dev.l-c-n.com/_temp/helvetica-f.html > screenshot: http://dev.l-c-n.com/_b/helvetica-f.png > on the left a recent Gecko nightly build, on the right, Safari 4.03 > > Arial is a clone of Helvetica and both fonts are very similar, but > look closely at the '@', they are different. > Thanks Philippe
I was getting a bit confused there ... I have always been rather sad that Helvetica isn't installed on Windoze or Linux although I have Nimbus sans L as a substitute Not sure about the relationship/history between Nimbus sans L and Helvetica nor can I determine how good a substitute it is. It's worth noting that any user may override the default sans font in their browser. In FF I can choose which font is used as a default sans font so I can change my default sans to be Nimbus Sans L, Arial or even a roman or mono font if I wanted to. Not sure if that user selection is available in IE. I have therefore always concluded it is a mistake to assume that all elements in a font-stack will display on a user's machine as they would mine. Regards Lesley ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [[email protected]] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
