|
|
Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 07/15/06 19:29
dingbat@codesmiths.com <dingbat@codesmiths.com> scripsit:
> It also depends on what languages you're dealing with. German text is
> roughly 20% longer than English text (for typical captions on
> application programs),
Perhaps, but the actual variation in text sizes is _much_ bigger. A piece of
text, when properly translated into another language, can be two or three
times longer. Captions have often been squeezed into narrow limits, but this
is really part of the problem and partly explains why so many people who
know English rather poorly still prefer using an English version of a
program. Quite often, a different-language version contains so serious
problems that only a professional who knows English well can see what some
texts mean - after he has mentally translated them back to English!
A couple of years ago I wrote down some notes on the effect of languages on
CSS:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/multicss.html
I seem to have observed that in addition to length variation of texts, word
length varies so much that justified text is a very risky business.
Moreover, there are particularly strong reasons to use CSS-styled text
instead of images containing text.
--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|