RE: Font bug in IE 5.5

What IE *should* do is this:
If a generic font is specified (for example, sans-serif), then a known
sans-serif font (Arial) should be used.  If Arial isn't installed, only then
should it try to find the first font that matches the family.  This would solve
the problem.






Rowland Shaw <Rowland.Shaw@seagatesoftware.com> on 10/13/2000 11:46:39 AM

To:   www-style@w3.org
cc:    (bcc: Peter Foti)

Subject:  RE: Font bug in IE 5.5



depends how you view the argument really... they may have moved from
defaulting to a font that may not be installed (say Arial for sans-serif) to
the first font that matches the family -- which *may* be the last serif font
installed for matching serif -- now, if that font is misdescribing itself
you have your problem.

Which is the bigger bug? barfing if Arial has been removed from the system,
or: presenting a font which it believes to be of the correct font family??


-----Original Message-----
From: pdf@bizfon.com [mailto:pdf@bizfon.com]
Sent: 13 October 2000 16:24
To: www-style@w3.org
Subject: Re: Font bug in IE 5.5




Unfortunately, the offending site is not one that I created.  So I have no
way
of changing their odd use of fonts.

I have seen it argued that this is not really a Microsoft bug, but the bug
of a
handful of fonts.  But if that was the case, why wouldn't I see this problem
in
IE 5.0?  This tells me that IE is doing something it shouldn't, and
therefore,
the bug needs to be fixed in IE.

Peter Foti





Clover Andrew <aclover@1VALUE.com> on 10/13/2000 04:11:00 AM

To:   "'www-style@w3.org'" <www-style@w3.org>
cc:    (bcc: Peter Foti)

Subject:  Re: Font bug in IE 5.5



pdf@bizfon.com wrote:

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

comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets, although I haven't seen an
answer there.

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

I've had this problem too. It happens any time IE 5.5 uses the 'serif'
generic font family, not just if it's the first in the list. I'm not sure
it happens on all IE5.5 installations, but it happens enough that it's
worth avoiding. I put a Windows-specific font name immediately before
serif to avoid it ever choosing that, eg:

  font-family: "GoodFont", "CrapFont", "Times New Roman", serif

Microsoft seems not to have acknowledged this (IMHO serious) bug.

By the way, I'm not sure putting *two* generic font-family names in the
list above makes much sense.

--
Andrew Clover
Technical Support
1VALUE.com AG

Received on Friday, 13 October 2000 12:14:13 UTC