Posted by Dylan Parry on 10/26/07 08:24

dorayme wrote:

> Doesn't this mean that if someone does not have the font you design
> for then they don't get the benefit of the special typesetting you
> are implementing? Or worse, that what is particularly excellent in
> your preferred font, can look unacceptable in some other fonts?

Not really. Typefaces, although varied, don't tend to be so overly
different as to look terrible when working to a baseline that wasn't
originally developed with that font. If you work with EM units, because
they are relative to the typeface's own size, the only difference you'd
notice is that some typefaces would take up more space on a page than
others, but overall they would look consistent with themselves, which is
what matters.

For example, if I develop a site using the Calibri typeface and a
baseline grid of approx[1] 20px, then a user visits the site and only
has Arial, the text on the page would simply appear slightly larger than
it would have done if they had Calibri installed. This doesn't matter
though as the line-height and margins would still be relative to the
font-size, ie. not fixed units, so they would look perfectly readable.

____
[1] which you can't guarantee unless you use PX units in your
stylesheet, but you can get a close approximation based on browser
defaults. The beauty of using a baseline grid based on EMs though is
that even if you don't get the exact 20px you aimed for, the page will
still have a consistent layout due to the nature of EMs.

--
Dylan Parry
http://electricfreedom.org | http://webpageworkshop.co.uk

The opinions stated above are not necessarily representative of
those of my cats. All opinions expressed are entirely your own.

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