|  | Posted by Spartanicus on 06/08/05 18:56 
"Alan J. Flavell" <flavell@ph.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
 >> That conflicts with your unreserved endorsement of Verdana as a user
 >> font.
 >
 >"Unreserved"?  Let's not go overboard ;-)  I haven't chosen it
 >myself...
 
 "perfectly fine choice" with no mention of the problems that are likely
 to result from that choice sounds like an unreserved endorsement to me.
 
 >But I'm sure it's a perfectly fine choice for an individual to make in
 >the privacy of their own browser, and *at a size of their choosing*
 
 Not if that choice of size is anything less than what the user would
 chose for a serif font. Verdana is a "perfectly fine choice" as an
 author font also, provided that it isn't sized at anything less than
 100%, but we all know that people rarely do that. A similar thing
 happens when users configure Verdana as a user font.
 
 >> >But considerable improvements have been made both in display
 >> >resolution and in rendering technology, so it's undergoing a
 >> >changeover, the way that it seems to me.
 >>
 >> Increasing screen resolution causes yet more issues.
 >
 >Indeed it does, but solutions are inevitable, since the problem is
 >increasingly widespread.
 
 The topic was most people finding serif fonts not pleasant to look at on
 the average screen, that issue isn't on the increase.
 
 >MS already offers a half-cocked solution
 >with lots of ifs and buts - presumably they'll be improving it over
 >time.
 
 What are you trying to achieve with this obscurity?
 
 >> Current mainstream OSs use bitmapped UI widgets, these shrink on a
 >> higher resolution screen. As a result the number of screens on the
 >> market with a resolution higher than ~100PPI is very limited. I've
 >> used a 148PPI laptop, using it was a royal pain due to this problem.
 >
 >As one data point, my office PC works at about 135dpi.
 
 That's most unusual if it's not a laptop.
 
 People using CRT monitors often calculate the PPI value based on a the
 physical screen dimensions and the desktop screen area setting in the
 OS. It's easy to make a mistake with that calculation since the
 resolution of a CRT has an upper limit imposed by the granularity of the
 phosphor clusters.
 
 >But font size (on a www-compatible browser) isn't the same as
 >bitmapped images and widgets.
 
 No-one is claiming that it is, you suggested that screen resolution was
 increasing and that therefore the problem of displaying serif fonts @
 body size was getting better. I see no substantial increase in screen
 resolution (in PPI) in new screens. I pointed out that current OSs using
 fixed size bitmapped widgets is one of the reasons why.
 
 --
 Spartanicus
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