[K12OSN] OT: universal font for HTML

[Rob Owens]

Thanks James.  You confirmed my suspicion.  I just didn't want to give
up if there was a solution out there.  But now that I know there isn't
one....I quit!

-Rob

James P. Kinney III wrote:
> For reasons of general insanity you can't do what you are trying to do.
>
> Here's why: every machine has a different font list. Unless you _know_
> that Uncle Fred hasn't tinkered with his windows box and dumped a font
> (or been hit with a virus that renames them) each iteration of windows
> has slightly different fonts. (I've seen things change with a security
> patch update on that train-wreck of an OS).
>
> Windows has font list "A", Mac has "B" and Linux has "C" and Solaris...
>
> Because of the licensing issues with fonts, insanity reigns supreme.
>
> So what do you do?
>
> If it MUST look consistent across all platforms you must use an image.
>
> Hmm. But that won't work as a vcard extension doesn't support graphics.
>
> So the last option is to lower the standards a tad and accept the
> inevitable that it's the CONTENT of the text that matters. If you use a
> generic font style like SAN-SERIF and set the size at 10pt the end user
> will always see the system default SANS-SERIF font at 10pt.
>
> Unless they have set their system set to only use their defined fonts in
> which case there is nothing you can do! I once saw a secretary who had
> set her pc to use a weird semi-script, semi-scrawled font. She loved it.
> I could barely read it. When the first web page came in that forced a
> font that was different, I got the support call to come fix the fonts on
> the browser.
>
> So the final short answer is this: if identical appearance is a
> requirement across multiple versions of multiple platforms, HTML is not
> the format to use. PDF is the correct format as it support embedding the
> fonts for absolute layout perfection. Until there is a freely available
> font source on the web that can be referenced for accessing a web-page
> designated font, there will be no way for HTML to be look and feel
> consistent across multiple versions of multiple platforms. So just make
> it look acceptable across your test platforms and that's the best you
> can do.
>
> On Wed, 2007-07-25 at 08:59 -0400, Rob Owens wrote:
>   
>> I don't know who else to ask, so I'm asking you guys...
>>
>> I'm trying to create an HTML email signature for my company (their idea,
>> not mine).  I've been struggling to pick a font that looks good on
>> all/most computer systems.  So far anything I've tried looks
>> significantly different on my 3 test systems:  Windows XP, K12LTSP 5.0EL
>> w/ the font forge package, and Xubuntu 6.10.
>>
>> Any suggestions?  I'm using Nvu to edit the HTML, and I am by no means
>> an expert.
>>
>> -Rob
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> K12OSN mailing list
>> K12OSN at redhat.com
>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
>> For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>
>>
>>     
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> K12OSN mailing list
>> K12OSN at redhat.com
>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
>> For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>