Posted by Harlan Messinger on 01/07/08 16:27

Adrienne Boswell wrote:
> I inherited a website from my boss, who has Palantino on her computer.
>
> I don't have Palantino on my computer at work, or my computer at home.
> My default font is Comic Sans, so when I started working on the site, I
> saw the headings appeared Comic Sans, and that is how I wrote the
> headings in the new stylesheet {font-family: "Comic Sans", arial,
> helvetica, sans-serif}.
>
> When I presented this to my boss, she screamed "But you KNOW all of our
> headings are in Palantino!" I said, I didn't know that, because all I
> ever saw was my default font. I explained that since I didn't have that
> font, and since there was no fallback font, I saw my default.
>
> Of course, now it's {font-family: "Palatino Linotype", "Times New
> Roman", Times, serif;}. I still only see Times New Roman, and
> personally, I liked it better with Comic Sans.
>
> So, the lesson here is to ALWAYS include a fallback and the appropriate
> generic font.

I learned a similar lesson years ago when I was editing a newsletter and
someone submitted an ad as a Word document with a collection of embedded
text boxes used for positioning. I thought the choice of fonts and the
layout were really weird but I dutifully converted the document to PDF
format and from there into a graphics file that I cropped and included
in the newsletter, before realizing that the funny fonts and layout
weren't intentional. The advertiser had been expressing his creativity
by tinkering with fancy fonts and didn't realize that (a) not everyone
has them and (b) they don't convey with the Word document.

From that point on whenever I'd receive copy in Word format I'd convert
it to PDF and send it back with the question, "Is this OK?" I also
learned to check PDFs submitted to me to make sure the fonts were embedded.

[Back to original message]