- From: Thomas Phinney <tphinney@cal.berkeley.edu>
- Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 20:04:11 -0700
- To: "L. David Baron" <dbaron@dbaron.org>
- Cc: www-style@w3.org
On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 6:40 PM, L. David Baron <dbaron@dbaron.org> wrote: > On Friday 2009-05-08 18:28 -0700, Thomas Phinney wrote: >> I was intrigued that the CSS spec decided to redefine sans serif vs >> serif. Typographers will be interested to discover that flared >> typefaces such as Optima (or my own Hypatia Sans) are categorized as >> "serif" in CSS. >> >> I'll certainly concede that it's simplest to take an absolutist stand >> and say that if there's any flaring at all, it should be considered >> serif. However, I'd argue that this is a case of CSS over-reaching >> itself. Or do people think there's value in considering Optima to be >> in the same category as Times rather than the same category as Arial >> and Helvetica? > > Are you referring to the definitions in > http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/fonts.html#generic-font-families ? (Or > are is there another spec you saw that also needs to be fixed?) That's the one. > It sounds to me like the wording in the spec should be changed to > make the definitions given more of an example (e.g., "serif fonts > tend to ..."), to defer more to the metadata in the font itself that > indicates whether the font is serif or sans-serif (or is that > problematic for the other types CSS defines?), and perhaps also > weaken the "without any flaring" in the definition of sans-serif. Probably "with little or no flaring" would be good. Optima could be explicitly added to the list of sans serif examples. > Is that roughly the change you were hoping the group would make > based on your comment, or are there other changes to the spec that > you think are necessary? I think that would do it. Thanks for taking my criticism and helping mold it into a useful modification. :) Cheers, T
Received on Saturday, 9 May 2009 03:04:52 UTC