RE: Font bug in IE 5.5

> I apologize in advance for posting this to the list, but I don't know
where
> to look for info on this.

I've seen this issue bounded about in
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.webdesign.html It appears that
in IE 5.5 the algorithm for font matching has changed, this, combined with
some dodgy fonts out in the ether (One was a Map Symbols font, from what I
remember) which mis-describe themselves. Technically, IE doesn't have the
bug, but a handful of fonts do.

For the sake of illustration as why it's not IE: If you worked in a shoe
shop and where asked to bet a pair of rugby boots for a gentleman, but
couldn't check the contents of the box for some reason, you'd simply select
a box that said rugby boots (or just boots as the closest match if not)
which may lead to presentation to the strapping lad of a pair of ladies
strappy sandals that had been mislabelled by the manufacturer...

> IE 5.5 seems to display fonts as symbols in some cases.  The case I saw
had
> a span using an ID and the ID had this style:

> font-family: serif,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;

That's bizarre, as the "serif" will always match (being generic) -- even
more bizarre is that the serif style conflicts with the other choices, but
it is not for me to reason why :o)

> I looked on Microsoft's site for some sort of patch to fix this, but
> searches returned nothing.  Does anyone know where I can find more
> information on this bug?

Contact the manufacturer of the font that is being substituted and get on
their case...

My tupence...
 Rowland

Received on Friday, 13 October 2000 04:58:42 UTC