See URL in .sig for testcase. For years I've used 800 x 600 and a 17" monitor. A few weeks ago I bought a 19" monitor. I was unimpressed with the granularity at that resolution, so I switched to 1024 x 768. In most respects, that switch produced acceptable results.
The glaring problem is I can't find a default proportional font I'm happy with. I was using 10 pt helv at 800 x 600. That doesn't scale acceptably at the higher resolution except at 14 px or smaller, and the default of 16 px seems to be the best available choice for Mozilla. My testcase shows that at 1024 x 768, helv at 16 px takes a bold stroke weight. At the same time, the apparent size increase from 14 px to 16 px looks like a point size change in the 3-4 range, certainly more than 2, where only 1 is actually desired. Maybe the real size change is only 2, but if that is the case, the double stroke weight hides it, and in any event, makes helv at 16 px undesirable, at 14 px too small, and at 15 px not available. Other fonts are equally bad or worse. A 16 px or smaller arial has a cripply looking lightweight stroke and siameses many characters. At one size up, it looks like it is full of holes, like worn pin printer output, looking acceptable only at plus two or larger. Arial in windoze looks ten times better, in both IE6 and Mozilla. Verdana is much like arial, only larger at any given size, also jaggedy at normal 16 px or smaller, and run together. Verdana in windoze is just as nice as arial in windoze, just larger. In the "OS/2 Desktop Guide" section "understanding fonts", it refers to a need to "install the font files using both the Font Palette and the ATM Control Panel". I can't find any ATM Control Panel, that the Font Palette minimalism totally baffles me. When I open Font Palette, I see a group of 8 fonts, two buttons, and no menu. Nothing indicates just what the "sample" represents, just a directive to drag to a target to change, which makes zero sense in Mozilla or SmartSuite 1.7. I can click on "edit font" and change the appearance and size of the sample, but have no clue as to the impact on the system of that procedure. I played with edit font last weekend, and in it currently are the following: 10-Arial Black, Verdana Bold, Rms Rmn, Helv, HelveticaBold, Courier, and NEws Gothic Bold; and 12-System VIO. Ever since the font palette activity last weekend, it seems as though the "allow documents to use other fonts" setting in Mozilla is ignored with regard to font sizes, only used with regard to faces. Mostly the problem I see on web pages is differences in sizes typically appear to take double the expected number of gradations, as if xsmall=1, small=3, normal=5, large=9, xlarge=14, etc, rather than scaling by 1 from 1-7. I also tried all sans fonts I could find in Mozilla prefs. All turned out to be either a poor size, or just plain ugly. The same holds true in Smartsuite 1.7, where it takes a herculean effort to acceptably render a typical doc file imported off the web, which invariably use fonts OS/2 doesn't know how to render anything like acceptably. I have installed the mswbfnts set and freetype from Hobbes, but I don't find anything that looks like font "management". Even sizes only is no small handicap. There's simply no way I've been able to find to get 1024 x 768 on 19" to look nearly as good as 800 x 600 on 17". What am I doing wrong? What haven't I done that needs doing? Am I seeing Mozilla bug(s)? Can poor font size scaling in Mozilla be corrected with some user level css? If so, what about SmartSuite? -- "To fear the Lord is to hate evil. . . ." Proverbs 8:13 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/www/SysFonts1.html
