Portable fonts and usage recommendations needed

[Dar Scott]

On Sunday, August 17, 2003, at 10:20 AM, J. Landman Gay wrote:

>> Something seems hideous about this.  Is there some good reason for 
>> this or was this planned from the start to torture me?
>
> It's tempting to say it was designed just to torment you, but actually 
> this has been the bane of desktop publishing and software design since 
> day one.

Yes.  The above is code for "I made the silly assumption that fonts 
with the same name might be similar".  More similar than they are.  I 
think 25% size variations are a lot.

> In general, if you lay out fields on Windows, there will be plenty of 
> room for the same text on a Mac. If you lay out fields on a Mac, leave 
> a lot of extra space for the Windows display. Sometimes you can adjust 
> the field margins depending on the platform to give the extra pixels 
> you need to create consistent word wrap, but don't count on it always 
> being accurate.

It is strange that some Windows fonts are taller, yet have a smaller 
width and line spacing.  That means I need to adjust one direction in 
some cases and another in others.

I had gotten into the habit of making my labels fit to text, something 
I realize is not what I want; I need to leave a little room for 
variations.

> If a user doesn't have the fonts your stack expects, there's no 
> telling how it will look and very little you can do about it.

I'm thinking of adding a simple alternate-font script in openBackground 
and others.  In one case, I'm going to go to a fixed text height, but 
that will hurt my smaller-font displays.  I expect I will bump the size 
by two on Windows in some applications and some controls.  I need to 
learn about profiles.

Dar Scott