Apologies for leaving out the subject of my posting of 25th Jan. As nobody on
this list ever seems to trim messages, I’ll repeat it here so it threads
properly.
(And, yes, I’ve finally changed my subscription address. That was the last
straw as far as gmail is concerned.)
Bob wrote:
I must be missing something in reading:
*I have now done quite a bit of experimentation with html5/canvas pages of
my own (documentation available on request, but a test page is viewable at
http://motif.gla.ac.uk/JSmolTest/canvasTextCheck.html
<http://motif.gla.ac.uk/JSmolTest/canvasTextCheck.html>;*
*). If things are as straightforward as indicated then the following should
satisfy everyone: *
ctx.font = "12px Helvetica Neue, Arial, sans-serif";
and
ctx.font = "bold 12px Helvetica Neue, Arial, sans-serif";
Windows browsers ignore Helvetica Neue (the current Mac OS default)
and pick up Arial, the Windows default. If there is some way of
testing this on a JSmol canvas I should be interested in trying it or
seeing the result.
Wasn't that a request for Helvetica Neue?
Sorry Bob, we seem to have got our wires crossed. I should have known
better than to try to use gmail for mailing lists. It really is a
nightmare. Only reason for doing so was another list seemed to have
blacklisted my ISP. Anyway...
...things were not that straightforward, and as I discovered after
that initial post. To summarize:
1. Helvetica Neue is the default Mac font on the current OSX Yosemite
(and also on Mavericks) and iOS 8. If you specify sans-serif you get
Helvetica Neue.
2. The default font previously was Lucida Grande, although HN was installed.
3. Apple in iOS 7 went to extreme lengths to support sophisticated
resizable versions of Helvetica Neue, and also allow single-pixel thin
sizes on iOS retina display.
4. Fonts on screen undergo sub-pixel rendering (anti-aliasing) to
smooth them. Apple has always paid more attention to this than
Windows. (When Microsoft started introducing it, many users objected
as they preferred the darker jagged text they were used to, in
preference to the lighter effect of anti-aliasing).
5. Apple has clearly changed its rendering engine between Snow Leopard
and Mavericks in a way that affects the canvas in JSmol, but does not
affect general MacOS X rendering or rendering of text on a canvas.
I have documented some of this at http://motif.gla.ac.uk/JSmolTest/HN/HN.html
I personally am interested in why this is happening - is it something
to do with having a 3d rather than a 2d canvas for example? - but I'm
not that interested. As far as you are concerned I would forget it -
there are more important technical problems that deserve your
attention than this.
You say:
Something is too subtle there for me -- they all look fine. Except in the
cases
where you see text running over the text box, that's a bug in Safari
misreporting
It may be too subtle for you, but it is there. I have an eye for these
things and can see the difference between Helvetica Neue and Avenir
immediately. I have blown them up, measured them, analysed the colours
and could explain it to you, but you'd be as well to take my word for
it. It's not a big difference, but I'll serve it on my site and it
will give any Mac user a slightly better experience, whether or not
they could analyse it. It's all about subconscious perception.
The bottom line is that Java Applets are clearly doomed and unlikely
to see 2016 (I'm sad about that as some of my own die with them), but
Jmol lives on as JSmol and my own Motivated Proteins site lives on
with it. Thank you again for that.
JSmol may be slower than Jmol (and Firefox/Mac does not seem too happy
with it sometimes) but JavaScript and computers will get faster, and
browsers will be continue to improve their optimization for
JavaScript, so time will cure the current problems.
David
__________________________________________________________________
Dr. David P. Leader (Honorary Research Fellow)
Boyd Orr Building,
University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Phone: +44 (0)141 330 5905
http://www.davidleader.net
The University of Glasgow, charity number SC004401
__________________________________________________________________
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dive into the World of Parallel Programming. The Go Parallel Website,
sponsored by Intel and developed in partnership with Slashdot Media, is your
hub for all things parallel software development, from weekly thought
leadership blogs to news, videos, case studies, tutorials and more. Take a
look and join the conversation now. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/
_______________________________________________
Jmol-users mailing list
Jmol-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jmol-users
