On Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:49:27 -0500 Felix Miata wrote: > On 2008/02/08 23:49 (GMT+1300) Michael Adams apparently typed: > > > If you add helvetica to that font family that caters to most Mac and > > Linux users as well. > > font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif > > Helvetica, while very nice on Mac, is quite the opposite on Linux. > http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/font-helvetica.html#bitmap > > On those newer Linux systems that actually have Helvetica installed, > it will only show up if you request "adobe helvetica", which is a > bitmap font available in limited sizes that are poorly suited for web > page screen display even when the size is actually correct. In most > other cases, there will be no Tahoma or Arial, and the fontconfig > fallback or alias will usually be DejaVu Sans or Bitstream Vera Sans, > both of which are equivalent in size and appearance to Verdana, larger > in apparent size than Tahoma, Arial & Mac Helvetica. >
I have been using Linux since 1999 and Helvetica was a Type1 font then. Type1 fonts are not bitmap fonts and should not be confused with the system fonts used when X11 is not installed. In 1999 support for TrueType fonts was scratchy but available. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-fonts.html http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-UnixResults.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_1_and_Type_3_fonts#History In addition Microsoft released the Core font set to the public and though discontinued by Microsoft free distribution was allowed under the original licence. These font are still being distributed third party and have been installed on the Linux computers of those that know what they are doing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web What used to happen on Linux if you did not have your system set up correctly is that fonts can look either pixelated or fuzzy, (expecially in KDE if i remember correctly) this problem occured periodically due to clashes between the various different video cards, X11, and display managers and altering Anti-Alias settings is usually the fix. This issue exhibited most in OpenOffice.org. I have never experienced this issue. The Result *Helvetica is fine to use as a font for Linux Systems*. Apologies to the list for the way this has got OT, but i felt this needed addressing in the forum it was raised to prevent others taking Felix's information at face value. -- Michael All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well - Julian of Norwich 1342 - 1416 ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
