Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
Philippe Wittenbergh wrote:
> Yeah, and the user who uses Lynx on Windows 95, I know I know…
No you don't. Those who use Lynx will not be affected by font fall-back
issues. In trying to ridicule my concern for the majority, you seem to fall
back to strawman arguments from the 1990s.
> I described the mechanism at work (as did fantasai and D. Baron).
You described font fall back that _should_ take place according to some
recommendations or drafts, not what happens in web browsers in general.
> Usually you don't even know if the user has the font activated or
> not... :-).
Exactly, with no need for a smiley.
> Ah, the limits of web design.
Or the circumstances where designers need to work.
>> The morale is that fallback fonts are nothing you could count on.
I wonder why you quote my conclusion and its clarifications, when you don't
comment on them at all.
Instead you throw in some CSS code without a word of English to tell what
your point is:
> @font-face {
> font-family: 'my-font';
> src: url(myfont.eot);
> src: url(myfont.woff), url(myfont.ttf);
> }
That's something completely different, with benefits and issues of its own.
It's not about fallback fonts at all, and to the extent that you use
downloadable fonts successfully, font fallback does not come into the
picture at all.
Yucca
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Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
Philippe Wittenbergh wrote: > Usually you don't even know if the user has the font activated or not... :-). This is a little off-topic for CSS-D, but still pertinent, so I hope the question will be acceptable to most : is it possible, using JavaScript or otherwise, to interrogate the DOM to find out which font has actually been used to render an element or a part thereof ? For example, if I write Now is the time for all good men Եւ երկիր էր աներևոյթ և անպատրաստ Ἀνδρόνικος Κάλλιστος Thông tin hàng ngày ở Việt Nam 苦相身为女 can I then somehow interrogate the DOM to ascertain the actual font used to render each character ? Philip Taylor __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
On Jul 15, 2010, at 3:23 PM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> Philippe Wittenbergh wrote:
>
>> A modern OS / browser will do the job for you.
>
> But most users, or (to be cautious) at least a non-negligible share like 40%
> of users, seem to be using an OS / browser that in non-modern by your
> implicit definition.
Yeah, and the user who uses Lynx on Windows 95, I know I know…
I never claimed that the CSS fall back mechanism provides perfect coverage for
all users.
I described the mechanism at work (as did fantasai and D. Baron).
>
>> p { font-family: font-a, font-b, font-c, serif;}
>>
>> Gecko, WebKit, Opera, and IE 8+ will look for the glyphs in font-a,
>> if that doesn't have the coverage [*], the browser looks at font-b,
>
> I'm not sure whether that happens even on those browsers in all situations.
> Even if it does, the situation is far from perfect.
> [...]
>
>> I specify 'Helvetica
>> Neue' as the font of choice on OS X; but that font doesn't have
>> coverage for some romanized characters (e.g ō), I thus specify a
>> fallback: 'helvetica', that has close-to-the-same metrics & look.
>
> That might be a good example in some sense, but it is a fairly limited case.
> It may help on OS X platforms, but what would happen in a more typical
> situation? The fallback of 'helvetica' is simply ignored.
Excuse me sir, but I _ explicitly gave an example for OS X only _. I didn't
mention anything what I am doing for other OS.
> Even if you carefully select a fallback font that is compatible with the
> primary font (and usually you can't do that very carefully, as the options
> are so limited in practice), a mix of fonts tends to produce bad results at
> least when a word contains letters from different fonts. For separate
> symbols, a mix is not that bad, if the fonts are roughly similar.
Usually you don't even know if the user has the font activated or not... :-).
Ah, the limits of web design.
> The morale is that fallback fonts are nothing you could count on. They may
> help at times, but basically you should select the primary font so that it
> is suitable for your needs and widely enough available. Depending on the
> content and purpose, different compromises need to be made. For example, if
> your material contains a large repertoire of special characters, you
> probably need to accept the consequence that many users won't see the page
> properly (though most can), due to use of a font like Arial Unicode MS.
@font-face {
font-family: 'my-font';
src: url(myfont.eot);
src: url(myfont.woff), url(myfont.ttf);
}
(abbreviated for simplicity).
Philippe
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http://l-c-n.com/
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Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
Philippe Wittenbergh wrote:
> A modern OS / browser will do the job for you.
But most users, or (to be cautious) at least a non-negligible share like 40%
of users, seem to be using an OS / browser that in non-modern by your
implicit definition.
> p { font-family: font-a, font-b, font-c, serif;}
>
> Gecko, WebKit, Opera, and IE 8+ will look for the glyphs in font-a,
> if that doesn't have the coverage [*], the browser looks at font-b,
I'm not sure whether that happens even on those browsers in all situations.
Even if it does, the situation is far from perfect.
> The good news for you: your first choice is installed by default on
> OS X and Windows Vista +. For Linux, throw in DejaVu Sans
Pardon? Arial Unicode MS is normally distributed along with Microsoft
Office. You might get the impression of distribution with Vista because
quote often a new PC with Vista comes with a pre-installed trial version of
Microsoft Office.
Anyway, Arial Unicode MS is far from universal. Moreover, it is a single
typeface - no italics, no bolding (though browsers may apply algorithmic
italics or bolding to it, with typographically poor results inevitably). But
the problems don't end here.
> I specify 'Helvetica
> Neue' as the font of choice on OS X; but that font doesn't have
> coverage for some romanized characters (e.g ō), I thus specify a
> fallback: 'helvetica', that has close-to-the-same metrics & look.
That might be a good example in some sense, but it is a fairly limited case.
It may help on OS X platforms, but what would happen in a more typical
situation? The fallback of 'helvetica' is simply ignored. You could use e.g.
font-family: 'Arial Unicode MS', Arial, sans-serif
but what would happen when Arial does not contain glyphs for the characters
needed? Moreover, even Arial Unicode MS might lack them, since different
versions of that font (typeface) come with different character coverage.
Even if you carefully select a fallback font that is compatible with the
primary font (and usually you can't do that very carefully, as the options
are so limited in practice), a mix of fonts tends to produce bad results at
least when a word contains letters from different fonts. For separate
symbols, a mix is not that bad, if the fonts are roughly similar.
The morale is that fallback fonts are nothing you could count on. They may
help at times, but basically you should select the primary font so that it
is suitable for your needs and widely enough available. Depending on the
content and purpose, different compromises need to be made. For example, if
your material contains a large repertoire of special characters, you
probably need to accept the consequence that many users won't see the page
properly (though most can), due to use of a font like Arial Unicode MS.
Jukka
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Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
On 7/13/10 5:07 AM, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote: > > > Philippe Wittenbergh wrote: > >> What I describe is actually the expected behaviour per CSS 2.1 >> /3-fonts… > > OK, even better news :-) Very many thanks. ** Phil. FWIW - That has been my experience with various language fonts--even when (a student) uses a font stack that contains *none* of the glyphs required by the language, all browsers and OS that I used displayed the characters correctly. The only caveat is Windows (xp, at least) which does not have Asian fonts installed by default -- you have to load them from the install disk. Cordially, David -- __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
On 07/13/2010 12:45 PM, Bob Rosenberg wrote: > > The problem is two fold (in my opinion). > > First is that unlike with printing use, there is no "Font of Last > Resort" fall-back. That support says to use the defined font BUT if > there are glyphs in the text which are not in the font then to > attempt to display them using the FoLR (ie: The only use of the FoLR > glyphs to display the "missing" codepoints). > > The second problem is that there is no way to request that the > fall-back be done ONLY for missing codepoints (similar to the FoLR > support). In your example above, requesting one or more glyphs that > are not in font-a makes the browser try font-b and then font-c until > a font is found that has support for ALL the requested glyphs. If > none contain all the needed glyphs (even though all the glyphs exist > in the combined list of supported glyphs), you get the browser's > default serif with "undefined codepoint glyphs" for the codepoints > not in the serif font. What I think should be looked into for the > long term is defining a CSS font-x parm that says use font-a to > display those glyphs that it supports (assuming that the font exists > - non-existence is equivalent for this purpose as does not support a > glyph) and fall-back down the list for the remaining glyphs until > every glyph has been displayed by a suggested font or a "missing > codepoint" glyph gets defaulted to. This is wrong. Font fallback is per-character. See responses from both myself and L. David Baron. ~fantasai __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
At 8:51 PM +0900 on 07/13/2010, Philippe Wittenbergh wrote about Re:
[css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode:
>A modern OS / browser will do the job for you. You can specify a
>fallback font if your first choice is not available:
>
>p { font-family: font-a, font-b, font-c, serif;}
>
>Gecko, WebKit, Opera, and IE 8+ will look for the glyphs in font-a,
>if that doesn't have the coverage [*], the browser looks at font-b,
>then font-c; if that fail, it takes the default serif font / or /
>look for something in the list of installed fonts that provide
>coverage.
The problem is two fold (in my opinion).
First is that unlike with printing use, there is no "Font of Last
Resort" fall-back. That support says to use the defined font BUT if
there are glyphs in the text which are not in the font then to
attempt to display them using the FoLR (ie: The only use of the FoLR
glyphs to display the "missing" codepoints).
The second problem is that there is no way to request that the
fall-back be done ONLY for missing codepoints (similar to the FoLR
support). In your example above, requesting one or more glyphs that
are not in font-a makes the browser try font-b and then font-c until
a font is found that has support for ALL the requested glyphs. If
none contain all the needed glyphs (even though all the glyphs exist
in the combined list of supported glyphs), you get the browser's
default serif with "undefined codepoint glyphs" for the codepoints
not in the serif font. What I think should be looked into for the
long term is defining a CSS font-x parm that says use font-a to
display those glyphs that it supports (assuming that the font exists
- non-existence is equivalent for this purpose as does not support a
glyph) and fall-back down the list for the remaining glyphs until
every glyph has been displayed by a suggested font or a "missing
codepoint" glyph gets defaulted to.
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Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
On Tuesday 2010-07-13 09:57 +0100, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:
> Is there, therefore, in CSS, some way of specifying as a part of the
> font fallback sequence that any font selected as a result of fallback
> must support a specific subset of Unicode such that the page can be
> guaranteed to display correctly provided that such a font does in
> fact exist on the visitor's machine ?
As was already pointed out, this is already guaranteed by CSS. I'd
like to explain in a drop more detail, though:
Font fallback is defined by CSS as being *per character*. In other
words, for each character, the implementation is required to find
the font that best matches the font-family, font-weight, font-style,
etc. This is defined in CSS 2.1:
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/fonts.html#algorithm
see especially bullet (2) ("and for each character in that
element"), bullet (4) ("but it does not contain a glyph for the
current character"), and bullet (5) ("If a particular character
...").
So the list given in the font-family property is a list of fonts to
be searched for each character in the text that is displayed, and
the generic families (explicitly or implicitly at the end of that
list) should cover a large set of fonts. Browsers should not
display a "missing glyph" symbol unless there's no font they can
access with an appropriate glyph.
I suspect that browsers don't actually follow this algorithm to the
letter (it's rather hard to test, for a start). However, I think
major browsers are generally quite good about finding some usable
font, if present, before falling back to a missing glyph symbol.
-David
--
L. David Baron http://dbaron.org/
Mozilla Corporation http://www.mozilla.com/
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Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
fantasai wrote: > Was there something else you wanted? Dear Fantasai : many thanks for demonstrating that I was incorrect in my belief that the font-fallback mechanism has not evolved over time; I am extremely pleased that this is the case. As to whether there is anything else in this area that I would like to see, it will take a little while to read the specifications; once that is done, I will get back to you (and this list) with any further comments. Philip Taylor __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
On 07/13/2010 03:38 AM, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote: > > > Michael Adams wrote: > >> Would it help to create a page with all the Unicode chars in the range you >> are >> using and ask who can see how many based on font selections on a per >> paragraph basis. For *my* Linux "Nimbus Roman No9 L" may be a well populated >> serif font and "Nimbus Sans L" as sans serif (dunno i haven't gone into it >> that much). You could also get replies from Mac, Windows 7, Vista and XP >> users and try for the best combinations. I don't know the maximum fonts you >> can have in a CSS fonts list - anyone? > > Thank you for the suggestion, Michael; it is certainly worth > listing the more common "well populated" fonts as you suggest, > but it doesn't address the real issue, which /seems/ to > be (in the absence of any evidence to the contrary) that the > CSS fallback mechanism was formulated at a time when Unicode > was not yet prevalent, and does not seem to have evolved to > cope with the need to have greater control over the fallback > font selected in order to deal with the various character > sets that the page uses. I'm not sure what limitation you have in mind. If you list a lot of fonts, the CSS font fallback algorithm will check all of them on a *per character* basis, until it finds one that has the glyph it needs. In some cases, this means the text will be rendered in multiple fonts, because the first font listed had some characters but not others, and the second font had the remaining characters, etc. The last step in the fallback algorithm is for the UA to check its "default font" for the glyphs. On some OSes, this "default font" is actually a set of fonts that collectively covers the widest possible range of characters. And the spec explicitly gives the UA permission to use any means it wishes to find an appropriate glyph before falling back to a missing character rendering. http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/fonts.html#algorithm http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-fonts/#font-matching-algorithm If you want to exclude certain characters from a font from ever being matched, then you would need to use an @font-face rule with a unicode-range descriptor. This functionality was part of CSS2, but was removed from CSS2.1 due to lack of implementation, and has been re-introduced for CSS3. Was there something else you wanted? ~fantasai __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
Philippe Wittenbergh wrote: > What I describe is actually the expected behaviour per CSS 2.1 /3-fonts… OK, even better news :-) Very many thanks. ** Phil. __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
Philippe Wittenbergh wrote: > A modern OS / browser will do the job for you. [snip] Thank you, Phillipe : a very interesting summary. It is certainly useful to know what the behaviour of most current rendering engines is, but of course unless it is actually enshrined in the specification, one cannot rely on that behaviour. ** Phil. __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
On Jul 13, 2010, at 5:57 PM, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:
> I have presumably chosen my primary font not only because I feel its
> aesthetics are appropriate but also because it supports the necessary
> subset of Unicode to correctly display the characters that make up
> the page. But if for some reason the visitor's browser does not have
> access to (in this case) Arial Unicode MS, and falls back to the
> generic "sans-serif", there is (as far as I can see) no way of
> guaranteeing that the page will still display correctly.
>
> Is there, therefore, in CSS, some way of specifying as a part of the
> font fallback sequence that any font selected as a result of fallback
> must support a specific subset of Unicode such that the page can be
> guaranteed to display correctly provided that such a font does in
> fact exist on the visitor's machine ?
A modern OS / browser will do the job for you. You can specify a fallback font
if your first choice is not available:
p { font-family: font-a, font-b, font-c, serif;}
Gecko, WebKit, Opera, and IE 8+ will look for the glyphs in font-a, if that
doesn't have the coverage [*], the browser looks at font-b, then font-c; if
that fail, it takes the default serif font / or / look for something in the
list of installed fonts that provide coverage.
(and if none exist, you'd get a missing glyph character)
The good news for you: your first choice is installed by default on OS X and
Windows Vista +. For Linux, throw in DejaVu Sans
[*] or the font is not available
Example: on something I work on, text mostly containing Roman/English with
romanized Japanese characters & words, I specify 'Helvetica Neue' as the font
of choice on OS X; but that font doesn't have coverage for some romanized
characters (e.g ō), I thus specify a fallback: 'helvetica', that has
close-to-the-same metrics & look.
--
note: you could always provide, on an 'about' page or something, a short
explanation / list of required fonts.
One of these days I'll publish an article with my notes on all fallback fonts.
When I beat my laziness or something.
Philippe
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http://l-c-n.com/
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Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
Michael Adams wrote: > On Tuesday 13 July 2010 23:02, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote: > >> I think that there is a great deal of unintentional racism in >> the US-English-centric web that we use today, but the last time >> a group of us tried to raise this as a serious issue within the >> CSS working group, one of the joint Chairmen had an apoplectic >> fit, so I have little hope that this will be addressed in the >> short term, much as I would like it to be. > > No racism intended from my reply. Nor did I infer any; I hope I didn't give the impression that I had. If I did, sincere apologies. ** Phil. __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
On Tuesday 13 July 2010 23:02, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote: > I think that there is a great deal of unintentional racism in > the US-English-centric web that we use today, but the last time > a group of us tried to raise this as a serious issue within the > CSS working group, one of the joint Chairmen had an apoplectic > fit, so I have little hope that this will be addressed in the > short term, much as I would like it to be. No racism intended from my reply. I was thinking that the OP's question originated in rare mathematical symbols. I recently helped in such an issue on the OpenOffice.org list where the OP wanted to know how to get a "R" glyph with a slash superimposed on top. No single unicode glyph exists for this but there are a range of glyphs which can overlay others including the slash. Vary rare request. Often with math formulas, browsers produce broken output and it is as much of an issue as languges though less common. In my understanding with languages the user has adequate fonts loaded on their box but the web dev pretty much can only offer sans-serif or serif to them and hope that the box/browser is well set up. __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
Chris Blake wrote: > > On 13/07/2010, at 6:38 PM, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote: >> [T]he CSS fallback mechanism was formulated at a time when Unicode >> was not yet prevalent, and does not seem to have evolved to >> cope with the need to have greater control over the fallback >> font selected in order to deal with the various character >> sets that the page uses. > > it could be seen as racist! I think that there is a great deal of unintentional racism in the US-English-centric web that we use today, but the last time a group of us tried to raise this as a serious issue within the CSS working group, one of the joint Chairmen had an apoplectic fit, so I have little hope that this will be addressed in the short term, much as I would like it to be. Philip Taylor __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
On 13/07/2010, at 6:38 PM, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote: > > > Michael Adams wrote: > >> Would it help to create a page with all the Unicode chars in the >> range you are >> using and ask who can see how many based on font selections on a per >> paragraph basis. For *my* Linux "Nimbus Roman No9 L" may be a well >> populated >> serif font and "Nimbus Sans L" as sans serif (dunno i haven't gone >> into it >> that much). You could also get replies from Mac, Windows 7, Vista >> and XP >> users and try for the best combinations. I don't know the maximum >> fonts you >> can have in a CSS fonts list - anyone? > > Thank you for the suggestion, Michael; it is certainly worth > listing the more common "well populated" fonts as you suggest, > but it doesn't address the real issue, which /seems/ to > be (in the absence of any evidence to the contrary) that the > CSS fallback mechanism was formulated at a time when Unicode > was not yet prevalent, and does not seem to have evolved to > cope with the need to have greater control over the fallback > font selected in order to deal with the various character > sets that the page uses. it could be seen as racist! > >> Alternatively, if you are dealing with particularly uncommon glyphs >> it could >> pay to use images of the ones you want instead. > > I would prefer not to go that route at all ! haha, how many characters in that language? > > ** Phil. > __ > 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/ > __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
Michael Adams wrote: > Would it help to create a page with all the Unicode chars in the range you are > using and ask who can see how many based on font selections on a per > paragraph basis. For *my* Linux "Nimbus Roman No9 L" may be a well populated > serif font and "Nimbus Sans L" as sans serif (dunno i haven't gone into it > that much). You could also get replies from Mac, Windows 7, Vista and XP > users and try for the best combinations. I don't know the maximum fonts you > can have in a CSS fonts list - anyone? Thank you for the suggestion, Michael; it is certainly worth listing the more common "well populated" fonts as you suggest, but it doesn't address the real issue, which /seems/ to be (in the absence of any evidence to the contrary) that the CSS fallback mechanism was formulated at a time when Unicode was not yet prevalent, and does not seem to have evolved to cope with the need to have greater control over the fallback font selected in order to deal with the various character sets that the page uses. > Alternatively, if you are dealing with particularly uncommon glyphs it could > pay to use images of the ones you want instead. I would prefer not to go that route at all ! ** Phil. __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
On Tuesday 13 July 2010 20:57, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:
> If I have a page such as the following :
>
>"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd";>
>
>
> Armenian test
>
> BODY {font-family : "Arial Unicode MS", sans-serif}
>
>
>
>
> Եւ երկիր էր աներևոյթ և անպատրաստ. և խաւար ի վերայ անդնդոց. և
> Հոգի Աստուծոյ շրջէր ի վերայ ջուրց
>
>
>
> I have presumably chosen my primary font not only because I feel its
> aesthetics are appropriate but also because it supports the necessary
> subset of Unicode to correctly display the characters that make up
> the page. But if for some reason the visitor's browser does not have
> access to (in this case) Arial Unicode MS, and falls back to the
> generic "sans-serif", there is (as far as I can see) no way of
> guaranteeing that the page will still display correctly.
>
> Is there, therefore, in CSS, some way of specifying as a part of the
> font fallback sequence that any font selected as a result of fallback
> must support a specific subset of Unicode such that the page can be
> guaranteed to display correctly provided that such a font does in
> fact exist on the visitor's machine ? And is there any way, presumably
> using a combination of HTML and CSS, to display a suitable error message
> using solely ASCII characters if such a font cannot be found ?
Would it help to create a page with all the Unicode chars in the range you are
using and ask who can see how many based on font selections on a per
paragraph basis. For *my* Linux "Nimbus Roman No9 L" may be a well populated
serif font and "Nimbus Sans L" as sans serif (dunno i haven't gone into it
that much). You could also get replies from Mac, Windows 7, Vista and XP
users and try for the best combinations. I don't know the maximum fonts you
can have in a CSS fonts list - anyone?
Alternatively, if you are dealing with particularly uncommon glyphs it could
pay to use images of the ones you want instead.
HTH
--
Michael
__
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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
Chris Blake wrote: > Hi, > > What about using CSS3 web fonts > http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator ? > Upload the font you want, it will generate all the different types, link > to them using the @fontface thing and bingo - they don't need that font > on their system. > > or am I dreadfully mistaken? > > BR, CB Thanks for the suggestion, Chris, but although it is related to the question it doesn't really address the issue of fallbacks. There may be many reasons why I cannot legitimately distribute the font with the web page (certainly true for Arial Unicode MS), so what I am looking for is a way to be able to reliably fall back on a font that the visitor's machine /does/ have, rather than using web fonts per se. ** Phil. __ 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/
Re: [css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
Hi,
What about using CSS3 web fonts http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator
?
Upload the font you want, it will generate all the different types,
link to them using the @fontface thing and bingo - they don't need
that font on their system.
or am I dreadfully mistaken?
BR, CB
On 13/07/2010, at 4:57 PM, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:
> If I have a page such as the following :
>
>"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd
> ">
>
>
>
> Armenian test
>
> BODY {font-family : "Arial Unicode MS", sans-serif}
>
>
>
>
> Եւ երկիր էր աներևոյթ և անպատրաստ. և
> խաւար ի վերայ անդնդոց. և
> Հոգի Աստուծոյ շրջէր ի վերայ ջուրց
>
>
>
> I have presumably chosen my primary font not only because I feel its
> aesthetics are appropriate but also because it supports the necessary
> subset of Unicode to correctly display the characters that make up
> the page. But if for some reason the visitor's browser does not have
> access to (in this case) Arial Unicode MS, and falls back to the
> generic "sans-serif", there is (as far as I can see) no way of
> guaranteeing that the page will still display correctly.
>
> Is there, therefore, in CSS, some way of specifying as a part of the
> font fallback sequence that any font selected as a result of fallback
> must support a specific subset of Unicode such that the page can be
> guaranteed to display correctly provided that such a font does in
> fact exist on the visitor's machine ? And is there any way,
> presumably
> using a combination of HTML and CSS, to display a suitable error
> message
> using solely ASCII characters if such a font cannot be found ?
>
> Philip Taylor
> __
> 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/
__
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/
[css-d] Fonts, fall-backs & Unicode
If I have a page such as the following :
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd";>
Armenian test
BODY {font-family : "Arial Unicode MS", sans-serif}
Եւ երկիր էր աներևոյթ և անպատրաստ. և խաւար ի վերայ անդնդոց. և
Հոգի Աստուծոյ շրջէր ի վերայ ջուրց
I have presumably chosen my primary font not only because I feel its
aesthetics are appropriate but also because it supports the necessary
subset of Unicode to correctly display the characters that make up
the page. But if for some reason the visitor's browser does not have
access to (in this case) Arial Unicode MS, and falls back to the
generic "sans-serif", there is (as far as I can see) no way of
guaranteeing that the page will still display correctly.
Is there, therefore, in CSS, some way of specifying as a part of the
font fallback sequence that any font selected as a result of fallback
must support a specific subset of Unicode such that the page can be
guaranteed to display correctly provided that such a font does in
fact exist on the visitor's machine ? And is there any way, presumably
using a combination of HTML and CSS, to display a suitable error message
using solely ASCII characters if such a font cannot be found ?
Philip Taylor
__
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/
