Re: W3C CSS Home Redesign RFC

Felix Miata wrote:

> On 2007/11/20 19:46 (GMT+0100) Bert Bos apparently typed:
>
>> The semi-official font of W3C is Gill Sans. We use it on paper
>> publications and business cards. It is not required to use it on Web
>> pages (because not everybody has the font
>
> NAICT, "not everybody" is a gross understatement. I've never seen it
> installed on anything except a Mac, unless Lotus Smartsuite was
> installed. Is it ever bundled with anything other than Mac or
> Smartsuite?

I suspected something similar, and a quick look at the compilation
http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-WindowsResultsFull.shtml
seemed to support this: "Gill Sans" has less than 3% coverage on Windows 
systems (according to survey results that are certainly biased, with 
many sources of errors, but still much better than mere guesses).

Then I realized that the long list also has "Gill Sans MT", with about 
50% coverage, and it is also listed in the font-family list of the W3C 
stylesheet. I have no idea of how much this might differ from other Gill 
Sans implementations. Checking from
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/font.aspx?FID=155&FNAME=Gill+Sans+MT
we can deduce that "Gill Sans MT" is part of some Microsoft Office 
distributions.

Then there's "GillSans", too. My current computer seems to have it but 
neither of the above.

Generally, when authors write longish lists of fonts "to be safe", they 
just copy the list from somewhere or make guesses based on casual 
information on font similarity. An author who has a list of ten fonts in 
his font-family list probably checked his page on one or two of them 
only. Sometimes the lists are just crazy, listing all kinds of fonts 
with quite different characteristics.

But I guess the W3C people know better than that and actually compared 
the fonts and checked their suitability.

I'd suggest considering whether Calibri would fit in into the list 
somewhere. Its general appearance is similar to Gill Sans. (Personally I 
find Calibri a little more readable and pleasant-looking, perhsps due to 
slightly thinner strokes.)


Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Wednesday, 21 November 2007 05:18:24 UTC