Re: font sizes in ems

On Jul 17,  1:07pm, Gayle Kidder wrote:

> If I specify a font size of 1em, then, it comes out considerably larger
> than the default body type size of the user. I've experimented with
> several different default fonts and sizes and find that in order to
> approximate the user's default size you need to specify something
> between .6 and .8 em, with .8em being the most reliable conversion among
> those I tested. This, of course, varies with the font... and to a
> certain extent with the browser. For those of you who are interested,
> I've posted a demo with an assortment of common Windows fonts at:
> http://www.beachmedia.com/www/emsizes.html

Your findings appear to be dependent on platform, browser, and choice of
default font. Explicitly setting a font on BODY would help. I took
some snaps from NS and IE (where available) on Mac and SGI platforms;
the results differ somewhat from your findings.

20394  http://www.w3.org/people/chris/emsize-macie301.gif
13625  http://www.w3.org/people/chris/emsize-macie301.png
18856  http://www.w3.org/people/chris/emsize-macns401.gif
12806  http://www.w3.org/people/chris/emsize-macns401.png
16437  http://www.w3.org/people/chris/emsize-sgins401p6.gif
11755  http://www.w3.org/people/chris/emsize-sgins401p6.png


-- 
Chris Lilley, W3C                          [ http://www.w3.org/ ]
Graphics and Fonts Guy            The World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/people/chris/              INRIA,  Projet W3C
chris@w3.org                       2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
+33 (0)4 93 65 79 87       06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Thursday, 17 July 1997 18:57:17 UTC