Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 10/04/07 10:23

Scripsit - Bob -:

> On Sat, 29 Sep 2007 14:25:36 -0400, "Jonathan N. Little"
> <lws4art@centralva.net> wrote:
>
>> Most IE(okay?) users are ignorant enough of the menu "View > Text
>> Size> ..." let alone fool with user stylesheets. Sorry just been my
>> observation.
>
> Exactly the point. Developers debate this font issue endlessly - most
> users don't even realize IE has menus. I've never met a non-developer
> who knew what a sytlesheet was. Too many techies worry about picayune
> minutia that matters only to other techies.

People who really, really need font size control (such as visually impaired
people, who might prefer visual browsing even though e.g. 6opx is the
smallest font size they can read) do know about browser menus and other ways
to user control over font size. They might even have a user style sheet,
perhaps written by a helpful techie friend.

To such people, fixed font size in pixels is not an issue because it does
not exist.

Fixed font size in pixels (or points or millimeters) is a problem just to
the few billions of people who do not absolutely need font size control but
cannot read the typical tiny font sizes comfortably (or at all). And they
often simply leave the problem by going elsewhere. If you wanted to sell
them something, you just told them to ask your competitors.

P.S. By "tiny", I mean effectively anything below 10pt. For readability on
paper, the font size of copy text should be between 10 and 12 points; that's
a reasonable compromise between conflicting needs, and the exact value
depends on the font, but generally 12 or 11.5 is more suitable than 10. On
screen, the font size should generally be _larger_ than on paper, since the
presentation medium is coarser and the reading conditions vary more. So even
12pt should be regarded as acceptable only if it is easily controllable by
users, as far as it depends on the author.

Magically, this means that the best thing you can do to copy text font size
is doing nothing. Well, except for font-size: 100%, which is logically a
dummy setting but helps to avoid some bus.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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