New to the Revolution, excited but confused about cross-platform UIinsanity! Rev poets, come to my aid, please.

[Dar Scott]

On Friday, February 6, 2004, at 11:06 PM, Christopher Mitchell wrote:

> Here are the results of a test with Arial.

Here are my results in raw form (mentioned here last year, I think):

> Here is some raw data of the formattedHeight and formattedWidth of the 
> word "Washington" in different fonts and sizes on two platforms.
>
> It looks like the mapping may be different depending on whether you 
> want to match area or line spacing.  Or even line length.
>
> OS X
> textSize textHeight  Arial  Helvetica  Courier  Courier New
>    8       10        10X40    9X40      9X50       10X50
>    9       12        12X48   12X48     12X50       12X50
>   10       13        13X55   13X54     13X60       13X60
>   11       14        14X57   13X57     13X70       14X70
>   12       16        16X65   14X65     14X70       16X70
>   13       17        17X68   16X68     16X80       17X80
>   14       18        18X75   17X75     17X80       18X80
>   15       20        20X77   18X77     18X90       20X90
>   16       21        21X85   20X85     20X100      21X100
>   17       22        22X88   21X88     21X100      22X100
>   18       24        24X95   22X95     22X110      24X110
>   19       25        25X103  24X103    24X110      25X110
>   20       26        26X105  25X105    25X120      26X120
>
> Windows XP
> textSize textHeight  Arial  Helvetica  Courier  Courier New
>    8       10        9X39	  ----     13X80        8X50
>    9       12       10X40    -----     13X80        8X50
>   10       13       10X49    -----     13X80       10X50
>   11       14       12X55    -----     13X80       10X60
>   12       16       14X66    -----     13X80       14X70
>   13       17       14X66    -----     13X80       14X70
>   14       18       16X69    -----     16X90       14X80
>   15       20       17X78    -----     16X90       16X80
>   16       21       18X87    -----     16X90       17X100
>   17       22       18X87    -----     20X120      18X100
>   18       24       21X95    -----     20X120      20X110
>   19       25       24X102   ------    20X120      21X130
>   20       26       24X111   ------    20X120      22X130

So for Arial...
OSX      Windows XP
8          9
10         11   (except for height)
12         14   (except for width)

I'm told that is all in differences in the fonts on different 
platforms.  Maybe so.  There might be some idiosyncrasies in the 
engine, too.

If you limit your mix of fonts and sizes, there might be some tricks 
you can do to make these the same in more cases.

Dar Scott