Specific/generic font-family name clashes

This seems quite an obvious issue to me, I was surprised not to be able to
find an answer in the spec or list archives.

What should happen when the name of a generic font family matches the name
of an actual font the user has installed? I've come across tediously-named
fonts like "Serif" before, for sure. And IE5 for one will use the specific
font over the generic; of course there's no guarantee the specific font
will be a good match at all. Should generic names, then, have predence?

(According to one IE5.5 user, a site I maintain turned up all in a symbol
font for him; I had simply applied font-family: serif to the main text and
had rather hoped this would be at least readable for everyone. The problem
went away when I specified a more specific font before the generic one. I
thought this could be caused by the issue above, although he swears he
doesn't have a symbol font installed under the name 'serif'! Can anyone
think of any other explanation?)

-- 
Andrew Clover
Technical Support
1VALUE.com AG

Received on Friday, 8 September 2000 09:57:36 UTC