Re: [css3-values] Physical length units

On 2012/02/22 08:45 (GMT) Matthew Wilcox composed:

> Well that's never going to happen.

That what?

>  Designers size text, and I think
> it's their moral responsibility to do so in fact.

Because the discussion is about sizing on the root element, changing the base 
size, the meaning of what you wrote is that it's the moral responsibility of 
designers to disrespect visitors by sizing text on the root element, to 
either disregard entirely or presume wrong the visitors' default settings. 
That's an oxymoron.

>  The browser can
> re-scale what we designers feel is an appropriate default, so there is
> no loss for anyone.

Of course there is a loss. Disrespecting defaults means the visitor loses 
time and is aggravated in being required to apply a defensive action in 
response to your offensive assumption that it's even possible for you to know 
his default is wrong coupled, with asserting your ridiculous assumption via a 
change in base font size. The loss is more than you probably imagine. Many 
people who could and would use a computer don't or won't due to the bother 
and difficulties the pervasiveness of tiny web fonts brings them.

Again, changing the base size is saying the defaults are wrong, something no 
designer can possibly know. And it's saying it's not OK for users to 
"re"-size in advance by conforming their defaults to their own requirements, 
but instead should reserve that action via zoom for individual pages after 
loading them, which to you is OK, and never mind that browsers have minimum 
size options that when used destroy your contextual sizing.

> Consider fonts where the x-height is considerably different.

Different than what? Absent scripting gyrations, which is outside the scope 
of CSS, you can't know what my default's x-height is any more than you know 
where my tax collector's grandfather was born.

>  I know a
> few where the default '16px' browsers use is visually far too small to
> be comparable with the standard fonts.

Again, http://tobyinkster.co.uk/article/web-fonts/ addresses your assertion.

> It's my duty to adjust that.

Right, a "duty" to be disrespectful, since you don't know the meaning of size 
under this roof, my neighbor's roof or the anyone else's other than your own.

> I do it by editing font sizes on html, and it would be wrong of me not to.

Except as for correcting the legacy IE bug, it's always semantically wrong to 
apply any style whatsoever on the HTML element. And it's always rude to 
assume the visitors' defaults are wrong. http://fm.no-ip.com/Auth/rudeweb.html
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Received on Wednesday, 22 February 2012 11:03:16 UTC