Re: [css-fonts] Specify that the default "medium" font-size should by 16px?

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 9:44 PM, Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> wrote:
> On 2014-01-16 17:57 (GMT-0500) Tab Atkins Jr. composed:
>> Felix Miata said:
>>> Forced how? Why?
>
>> Forced by web compat, where there's a significant contingent of sites
>> that are at least somewhat broken when the default font size isn't
>> 16px.  Anyone who browses the web with their default font size set to
>> something larger sees this on occasion.
>
> And it's long past time to quit ignoring where that fault lies and start
> spreading the word among mere mortals that it's not any browser's fault that
> people have been incompetently designing web pages since last century, and
> had foisted upon them browser "compatibility" that stifles both the
> eradication of incompetent web design and inhibits improvement of current
> and future web experience, a11y & u9y.

It's nice to dream utopian dreams, but it helps to temper them with
reality and knowledge.  Web compat must be maintained.  Your strange
ideas about the evils of making 'px' a physical unit are completely
disconnected from reality.


>>> I hope not. A 16px default font size hasn't been an appropriate medium
>>> for
>>> me in over 12 years.
>>
>> It's the default medium on every single browser in existence today, as
>> far as I know.
>
> And I just explained to you it isn't. The holdout against the unfortunate
> circumstance of logical unit names usurping names of physical units, KHTML,
> sets its default in the form of a pt unit whose relationship to px varies
> according to DPI, as it should be for all browsers designed for users
> instead of designers and their arbitrary definition of a CSS pt unit.

I'm sorry, I meant to say that 16px is the default medium on every
single browser with enough market share to matter for web compat.
Konqueror's non-adherence to the standard has no relevance on compat.


>> User preference has nothing to do with my suggestion;
>> I'm talking about the base default, which currently has no specified
>> recommendation at all.
>
> Apparently there has been no need for one. What's causing a need now that
> didn't exist before?

It's obvious from inspection that every browser defaults to 16px font
size, so it hasn't been a big deal that it's not standardized.  That
doesn't excuse us from standardizing it, though - the entire *point*
of standardization is to allow new browsers to enter the market
without having to do a bunch of reverse-engineering themselves.


> Linux, through KDE at least if not other DEs or anywhere else KHTML might be
> used, presents an opportunity for a personal computer to compute and render
> sizes accurately instead of via illogically named "logical" sizing units of
> names usurped from the physical reality that were created long before CSS
> existed.

Every time you say something like this, you just make it obvious that
you have no idea what the standard actually says.  You should really
go read and understand it, and stop trolling, because this paragraph
of yours is completely disconnected from reality.

~TJ

Received on Friday, 17 January 2014 17:39:01 UTC