Warren Ockrassa wrote:
> I can't speak to the printing issues but it seems a bit backward
> that you'd get something on the screen and another thing from the
> printer. (Read: bad design someplace.)
Ah yes, one of the (many) annoyances of our (expensive) accounting
package.
Apple struggled with this for many years, despite an awfully good
attempt at WYSIWYG. When the original Macs came out, their bitmapped
screens were relatively high-res, but still only half the resolution of
Apple's impact printers and a quarter the resolution of their laser
printers. Hence the development of fonts designed to look good at 144dpi
for the laser printer, and other fonts designed to look good at 72dpi
for the screen.
With modern high-res monitors, anti-aliasing (when and if available),
Adobe's Postscript, Apple's True Type, the issue is perhaps not quite as
bad as it used to be. But still, a font which is readable printed on
paper is not neccessarily readable on screen, especially at small sizes.
So my advice is: for material which the user will print, let the user
set the font. For material seen only on screen (eg field labels, buttons
etc) choose a font which is easy to read. If you really want to be not
just user-friendly but user-loving, let the users change the on screen
fonts as well!
Your users will thank you.
--
Steven D'Aprano
==========================================
M.B. Sales Pty Ltd Ph: +61 3 9460-5244
A.C.N. 005-964-796 Fax: +61 3 9462-1161
