3.2 Dealing with undisplayable characters

I was reviewing my notes on section 3.2 before typing them and had a 
quick look over section 3.1 "Choosing & specifying fonts"

3.1 has four rules:

* Do not use <font> tags - use CSS styles instead.
* Always use the serif and sans-serif fallbacks
* Don’t assume you know which fonts will be available on the localized 
web page

when i was brain storming for section 3.2, I was thinking that one of 
the more common problems was when fonts were specified in a web page or 
stylesheet that didn't conatin all the necessary characters.

I was thinking that the first rule in 3.2 should be a general rule 
indicating that if possible don't assign a specific font, leave the font 
preferences to teh users choice.

Although If such a rule should be included, and most designers would 
balk at such a rule, then it would be more appropriate in section 3.1, 
esp. in light of the third rule in section 3, which could be collapsed 
into the new rule as part of teh discription.

what do people think?

While I'm thinking of section 3.1, the WAI guideines (in 3.4) have a 
rule to use relative units rather than absolute units, should there be a 
similar rule in our section 3.1 when discussing how to specify fonts? 
Esp. with relation to font-size requirement across scripts (Assuming 
someone, for some strange reason wanted to mix scripts)?

Andrew

Received on Wednesday, 14 May 2003 10:47:40 UTC