Re: [Ayatana] Ubuntu Font as default for web site

["Scott E. Armitage" <launchpad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 4:39 PM, Remco <remco47@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This may not be a good idea from a compatibility point of view. Many
> websites expect sans-serif to mean Arial, serif to mean Times New
> Roman and monospace Courier New. They expect sentences they write to
> be in that font, which has a particular size. If we change an Arial
> sentence to Ubuntu, it will not be the same size and on some pages
> that will not fit anymore.

Sorry, but if a website wants to use a specific font, then they should
specify that font in the stylesheet. The terms sans-serif, serif, and
monospace are keywords that allow the browser to display text using
the corresponding user-selected fonts.

> Now, we don't have Arial, Times New Roman, or Courier New, since they
> are not open source. But Red Hat did contribute the Liberation set of
> fonts, which are completely different fonts, except that the letters
> are exactly the same size as Arial, Times and Courier. Using these
> will ensure that web pages don't break.

A web page that relies on the exact pixel-size of a font is broken to
begin with.

-Scott

-- 
Scott Armitage, B.A.Sc., M.A.Sc. candidate
Space Flight Laboratory
University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies
4925 Dufferin Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3H 5T6