On 2009/01/04 21:16 (GMT+0200) Jukka K. Korpela composed: > ... My conjecture is > that there is a lower limit for physical (actual) font size for Courier, > independently of browser settings. Something like 10pt, it seems. To me, > this makes sense, since Courier is difficult to read in that size, and going > below that would be rather absurd.
It's precisely 10pt, the size selected many many moons ago in early browsers for HTML <small> (unnested), <font size=-1> (unnested), & <font size=2>, as well as the result of selecting "smaller" in the IE text sizer. Windows "thinks" not in px, but in pt. At the default Windows DPI of 96, 12pt is 16px, which is the smallest possible px value that generates Courier at the next size larger than the smallest (15px). 10/12 of 16px is 13.333px, which IE truncates down to 13px as the size used internally for 10pt. On XP if one browses to the Fonts folder in list mode one sees that Courier is not merely Courier, but "Courier 10, 12, 15 (VGA res)". http://fm.no-ip.com/auth/Font/fontm-courier.html shows that a specification of as much as 15px for Courier generates the smallest possible size. It seems a bit odd that any OEM font supplied with every copy of the most popular OS would not be available in a size as small as its teensy default UI font size, 8pt, which is a mere 2/3 the (nominal) CSS, 44% physical, size of default web page text. > ... beware that browsers typically use something like font-size: 90% ... It's not particularly "something like", but 10pt (83.333%) in pt browsers (e.g. IE), and (10pt translated at 96 DPI to) 13px in Windows and Mac Gecko's and Webkit's default font prefs. For some odd historical reason I've yet to discover, on Linux the Geckos translate 10pt to 12px for default prefs, about which I filed Mozilla https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=437531 7 months ago. > ... for elements they render in monospace font by default. This is probably > supposed to help with bulks of text in monospace font, like program > listings, but it tends to become a problem for inline monospace text: it > looks too small as compared with surrounding text. I think if one compares the traditional default font families, Courier New monospace and the relatively diminuitive Times New Roman proportional, it should be rather clear why monospace defaults to the next smaller size (10pt) as long as proportional is 12pt. Oh that were ancient https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3512 fixed many moons ago. :-( Maybe it will be while we are still alive enough to enjoy it. :-p Separate prefs sizes for different fonts, and the resulting bizarre & unpredictable effects on CSS font sizing, at this late date is just too stupid to believe. -- "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." Proverbs 22:6 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] 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/
