Re: [css-fonts-4] compat problem with 'system' generic font family?

On 11/9/15, 5:55 PM, "John Daggett" <jdaggett@mozilla.com> wrote:

>
>Alan Stearns wrote:
>
>> Authors will (and should) support older browsers for quite a long
>> time. Even after all of the current browsers support the ‘system’
>> value it won’t be safe to use on Windows for years. So they’ll add
>> ‘-apple-system’ without the unprefixed generic to their font stacks
>> (as Medium has done now) which may force everyone to implement the
>> prefixed version (I believe Firefox is already considering this).
>
>The ancient Windows 3.0-era font 'System' exists on XP but not on
>Windows 7 or anything more recent. So I don't really see a great need to
>use something more awkward simply to avoid name conflicts with 'system'.
>By the time it's implemented in user agents the need to support XP-level
>systems will be a thing of the past. Authors can use available
>techniques for supporting antique browsers.

OK - I did not know that this issue was limited to XP-and-back installs. If that’s the case I’m much less worried.

Thanks for the additional details,

Alan