Re: Can cascading work?

On Apr 24,  8:38am, David Perrell wrote:

> William M. Perry wrote:
> >   This will really only help with well-written author stylesheets.  I
> > haven't done a sampling, but if anybody has, I'd be interested in the
> > percentage of sheets that actually _use_ relative font sizing versus
> the 'I
> > want this 26pt, dammit' philosophy.
>
> "26pt" _is_ relative on a computer display.

That is not the meaning of relative font sizing in CSS1, as you are
well aware.

> A display resolves to pixels, not points, and the displayed size
> of a point should be adjustable in the UI.

I would direct you to the definition of a pixel in CSS, as well.

So to get back to the original question - current usage tends to go
for absolute rather than relative font sizing, I agree. This is partly
an education issue and partly a case of people working around incomplete
implementations. Also the widespread use of old X servers that use
bitmapped fonts rather than scalable fonts may be a factor - people
pick sizes they know they have good bitmaps for.

I think this is teething trouble and that once there are examples of
best practice then people will base their own stylesheets on these.

> (WARNING!!! for anyone who wants to try this: Be sure you know how to
> navigate the dialog box for setting the display using the keyboard. The
> dialog box becomes much larger than the display area, and you will not
> be able to see the controls that you used to make the adjustment! You
> will be stuck with huge type FOREVER!!!)

I think David just discovered why people who use huge type have specialy
adapted computers rather than just using standard Windows software ;-) In
particular, virtual desktops and a scrolling viewport are typically
available in suchg a set-up.

-- 
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, 24 April 1997 12:24:15 UTC