Mike Foskett wrote: > What would you recommend as a Verdana equivalent / replacement font on a > Linux machine? > It has to be a prevalent font with similar readability.
At the outset, I recommend against ever specifying Verdana, for the reasons expressed at http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/verdana.html and http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2004/01/avoid-verdana among others. > From that I'd perhaps suggest: > Font-family: Verdana [PC], ???? [Linux], Helvetica [Mac], sans-serif > Or fallback to: > Font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif The Bitstream Vera Series, besides being a free download for everyone, seems to have become standard equipment on recent Linux distros. Except for the "I", "J", "i" & "j", most people won't notice any difference between Vera Sans and Verdana. > What do you think? I think simply specifying sans-serif or serif or nothing at all is the ultimate solution. Specifying anything else essentially means visitors never see their own preference. If you can't do that, and absolutely must impose your choice, at least be nicer to Mac users by making Geneva the first selection. Deciding on a choice intended for Linux users is really not easy. Here's a set of fonts common to Fedora Core 3 (about 8 months old), SuSE 9.2 (about 9 months old), and Mandrake 2005 (about 3 months old): http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/Font/fonts-face-samplesL.html http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/fonts-face-samplesL-m2005.gif Here are some of those Linux fonts compared to common M$ fonts: http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/Font/fonts-face-samplesLW.html http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/fonts-face-samplesL2-m2005.gif Note the above comparison source has several available alternate stylesheets that do nothing but switch the displayed sizes. http://www.codestyle.org/index.shtml is a good place to see others you don't have installed. -- "If you love your children, you will be prompt to discipline them." Proverbs 13:24 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/ ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
