Barcode Font and NS/MOZ/Firefox

[Emanuele Calo']

Hi,
I've defined a CSS with this selector:
#IUPBarCode{
font-family : "3 of 9 Barcode";
font-size: 30px;
font-weight : normal;
position: absolute;
top: 150px;
left: 22px;
}
because I wish to print a booking's unique identifier with bar code.
Unfortunately, Mozilla and Firefox don't visualize the bar code, but the
alphabetic font type.
IE and Opera work properly.

Any help is greatly appreciated,

thanks
Emanuele Calò
--
Emanuele Calo'
UI Designer - Usability/Accessibility Manager
Svimservice Spa
Dipartimento Applicazioni Web
Via Massaua, 18 70123 Bari - Italy
+39 - 80 - 5820813
em***********@s vimservice.it
www.svimservice.it

[Matthias Gutfeldt]

Emanuele Calo' wrote:

Hi,
I've defined a CSS with this selector:
#IUPBarCode{
font-family : "3 of 9 Barcode";
font-size: 30px;
font-weight : normal;
position: absolute;
top: 150px;
left: 22px;
}
because I wish to print a booking's unique identifier with bar code.
Unfortunately, Mozilla and Firefox don't visualize the bar code, but the
alphabetic font type.
IE and Opera work properly.

Any help is greatly appreciated,

I have never heard of that font, and I seriously doubt that many people
have it installed on their machine.

Theoretically you could make the font available using @font-face (see
<http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/fonts.html#font-descriptions>), but I don't
think this is widely supported.

Also, it's not a good idea to display symbols this way. Read
<http://ppewww.ph.gla.a c.uk/~flavell/charset/fontface-harmful.html>.

Your safest bet is to create an image of the bar code server-side.
Creating a proper ALT text could be a problem, of course.
Matthias

[Emanuele Calo']

> Emanuele Calo' wrote:

Hi,
I've defined a CSS with this selector:
#IUPBarCode{
font-family : "3 of 9 Barcode";
font-size: 30px;
font-weight : normal;
position: absolute;
top: 150px;
left: 22px;
}
because I wish to print a booking's unique identifier with bar code.
Unfortunately, Mozilla and Firefox don't visualize the bar code, but the
alphabetic font type.
IE and Opera work properly.

Any help is greatly appreciated,

Matthias Gutfeldt:
I have never heard of that font, and I seriously doubt that many people
have it installed on their machine.

Theoretically you could make the font available using @font-face (see
<http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/fonts.html#font-descriptions>), but I don't
think this is widely supported.

Also, it's not a good idea to display symbols this way. Read
<http://ppewww.ph.gla.a c.uk/~flavell/charset/fontface-harmful.html>.

Your safest bet is to create an image of the bar code server-side.
Creating a proper ALT text could be a problem, of course.

This page work within an intranet where the font "3 of 9 barcode" is
installed
on all clients.
therefore, I don't have the problem of using @font-face.
The real problem is:
why the selector defined above visualize properly the symbols in IE and
Opera,
and not in Gecko browsers?
Thanks for your answer
emanuele
P.S: excuse me for the post sended at your email address

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Wed, 7 Jul 2004, Emanuele Calo' wrote:

Matthias Gutfeldt:

Also, it's not a good idea to display symbols this way. Read
<http://ppewww.ph.gla.a c.uk/~flavell/charset/fontface-harmful.html>.
This page work within an intranet where the font "3 of 9 barcode" is
installed on all clients.

Then it's not really on-topic for a WWW group; but there is an
important principle, which is relevant here too.
The real problem is:
No, the -real- problem is the one described at the cited URL.
why the selector defined above visualize properly the symbols in IE and
Opera,
Wrong - those browsers do what you -want-, and -not- what you asked
for.
and not in Gecko browsers?
Gecko browsers do what you asked for, which is -not- what you want.
Thanks for your answer

I think you would have to be advised to use the user-defined character
coding. Unfortunately this too causes some problems, but it is, at
least, tolerably specification-conforming. My page(s) say something
more about this.

[Emanuele Calo']

Alan J. Flavell wrote:

On Wed, 7 Jul 2004, Emanuele Calo' wrote:

Matthias Gutfeldt:

Also, it's not a good idea to display symbols this way. Read
<http://ppewww.ph.gla.a c.uk/~flavell/charset/fontface-harmful.html>.

[snip]

No, the -real- problem is the one described at the cited URL.

why the selector defined above visualize properly the symbols in IE and
Opera,

Wrong - those browsers do what you -want-, and -not- what you asked
for.

and not in Gecko browsers?

Gecko browsers do what you asked for, which is -not- what you want.

Touchè... it's true
Thanks for your answer

I think you would have to be advised to use the user-defined character
coding. Unfortunately this too causes some problems, but it is, at
least, tolerably specification-conforming. My page(s) say something
more about this.

Yes! I apologize for my hurried response in the previous post...
I begin to read your article...
Thanks
Emanuele Calò

[Brian]

Matthias Gutfeldt wrote:

Your safest bet is to create an image of the bar code server-side.
Creating a proper ALT text could be a problem, of course.

Isn't the bar code a graphical representation of a catalogue number of
some sort? If so, then alt should be set to that number.

--
Brian (remove ".invalid" to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

[Darin McGrew]

Alan J. Flavell <fl*****@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote:

I think you would have to be advised to use the user-defined character
coding. Unfortunately this too causes some problems, but it is, at
least, tolerably specification-conforming. My page(s) say something
more about this.

Admittedly, relying on particular fonts is a bad idea, but I'm not 100%
convinced that this case necessarily violates the specs. It isn't the same
thing as pretending that <font face="symbol">a </font> is a Greek alpha,
rather than a Latin a. The barcode font really does display the characters
found in the document, albeit in a rather atypical way.

I guess I see it as being similar to a fantasy font that represents the
letter a as an aardvark posed to look like the letter a, the letter b as a
babboon posed to look like the letter b, etc. Sure, you wouldn't want to
use it for normal body text, but it isn't a dingbat font. It really is
representing the characters that it claims to be representing.

Now, it may be that the OP's particular barcode font is buggy, and
identifies itself as a dingbat font or something similar, in which case
browsers should ignore it for normal Latin characters. But that's a
separate issue from whether a barcode font *could* legitimately claim to
represent normal Latin characters.
--
Darin McGrew, mc****@stanford alumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, da***@htmlhelp. com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff?"

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Wed, 7 Jul 2004, Darin McGrew wrote:

The barcode font really does display the characters
found in the document, albeit in a rather atypical way.
Thank you for making that point! You certainly have some logic on
your side, indeed.
I guess I see it as being similar to a fantasy font that represents the
letter a as an aardvark posed to look like the letter a, the letter b as a
babboon posed to look like the letter b, etc. Sure, you wouldn't want to
use it for normal body text, but it isn't a dingbat font. It really is
representing the characters that it claims to be representing.
Yes, that figures. So I suppose we need to know more about the font
itself and why (as we were told) Gecko-based browsers didn't consider
it eligible to be used in the situation that was being tried.
Now, it may be that the OP's particular barcode font is buggy, and
identifies itself as a dingbat font or something similar, in which case
browsers should ignore it for normal Latin characters.

If we're talking about a Windows platform, then some investigation
with the MS "Font Properties Extension" would be handy.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/...roperty21.mspx

In particular - looking at what the "CharSet/Unicode" tab reports for
this font.

Funnily enough, I think my suggestion of "user defined" encoding might
turn out to give the desired result after all (even if my argument
which led up to it might have been misplaced in this instance!).

thanks again

[Christoph Paeper]

*Brian* <us*****@juliet remblay.com.inv alid>:

Matthias Gutfeldt wrote:

Your safest bet is to create an image of the bar code server-side.
Creating a proper ALT text could be a problem, of course.

Isn't the bar code a graphical representation of a catalogue number of
some sort? If so, then alt should be set to that number.

If "3 of 9 Barcode" is in fact a Code 39 barcode font, it can encode
digits, the uppercase English letters and seven more characters (-$% ./+).
The 'alt' text should of course consist of the characters that are
barcoded.

<http://en.wikipedia.or g/wiki/Code_39>

--
I'm a signature virus, help me spread!

[Emanuele Calo']

> On Wed, 7 Jul 2004, Darin McGrew wrote:

The barcode font really does display the characters
found in the document, albeit in a rather atypical way.

Alan J. Flavell wrote:
Thank you for making that point! You certainly have some logic on
your side, indeed. Darin McGrew wrote:

I guess I see it as being similar to a fantasy font that represents the
letter a as an aardvark posed to look like the letter a, the letter b as
a babboon posed to look like the letter b, etc. Sure, you wouldn't want
to use it for normal body text, but it isn't a dingbat font. It really is
representing the characters that it claims to be representing.

Alan J. Flavell wrote:
Yes, that figures. So I suppose we need to know more about the font
itself and why (as we were told) Gecko-based browsers didn't consider
it eligible to be used in the situation that was being tried. Darin McGrew wrote:

Now, it may be that the OP's particular barcode font is buggy, and
identifies itself as a dingbat font or something similar, in which case
browsers should ignore it for normal Latin characters.

Emanuele Calò:
here is a font that display properly barcode characters on Gecko-based
browsers and IE, Opera, etc.:
http://www.barcodesinc.com/free-barcode-font/