What fonts are equivalent on different platforms?

[axlq]

I'm trying to design my style sheets such that my pages have
similar-looking fonts different platforms (Linux, Mac, Adobe,
X-Windows, MS Windows, etc).

The problem is, a font on one platform might be the same as a font on
another platform, but with different names. I'd like to be able to
specify the font names that are "most equivalent."

For example, "Lucida Console" is a very attractive and readable
monospaced font available in Windows. I now use it instead of
Courier for everything requiring monospaced text. I *think* that
the equivalent Mac font is "Monaco" -- but I'm not sure.

Another example: Arial in Windows looks like Helvetica on the
Mac. There are variants such as Helv and Univers that also look the
same. But what about other popular Windows fonts like Trebuchet
MS and Verdana? Do they have near-identical relatives on other
platforms?

Does anyone know of a resource that shows me what different fonts
look like on different platforms?

I did find http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html
but the page shows them all rendered as Windows fonts. For example,
see Helvetica next to both Arial and Trebuchet; Helvetica looks like
either Arial or Trebuchet, but it can't be both. Even the Mac
screenshots look wrong; the all look like Windows fonts.

-Alex

[Mark Parnell]

Deciding to do something for the good of humanity, Wes Groleau
<gr**********@freeshell.orgdeclared in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets:

- when I am working on _my_ websites, I sometimes
need to see what they look like on the <censored>
thing that half the audience is using.

You do realise that Mac IE is a completely different beast to Win IE?

--
Mark Parnell
My Usenet is improved; yours could be too:
http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

[VidTheKid]

Sherm Pendley wrote:

For myself, I'm beginning to wonder about the wisdom of running a 17" CRT
at 1280x1024. :-\

There is little wisdom in that. It is a CRT monitor, therefore it is a
4:3 aspect ratio (unless it's widescreen, which would be worse) and
you're running a 5:4 ratio logical pixel resolution. As a result,
everything on your screen is squished to be about 7% fatter or 7%
shorter than it should be. Try 1280x960.

--
Vid the Kid

[VidTheKid]

axlq wrote:

You're confused. The fact is, simply, that Arial looks a lot more
like Helvetica than any other sans-serif font not called "Helvetica."

Among fonts commonly seen on desktop computers, perhaps. But I've
taught myself the difference. I like Helvetica better. Unfortunately,
my installation of Firefox 1.0 on Windows 98 insists on substituting
Arial for Helvetica despite the fact that I have Helvetica installed on
my system and against any attempt at overriding this behavior with my
user stylesheet.

--
Vid the Kid

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Tue, 18 Jul 2006, Wes Groleau wrote:

with some browsers (my credit union claims its

^^^^^^

online services work only with Safari and Internet
Explorer--but at least on my system, they DON'T
work with Safari.)

Strange use of the word "claims". I'd've thought "admits" or
"confesses" would be a more apt term.

SCNR.

[Toby Inkster]

Wes Groleau wrote:

- when I am working on _my_ websites, I sometimes
need to see what they look like on the <censored>
thing that half the audience is using.

Half your audience is using IE/Mac? I can't imagine there are many sites
like this -- probably not even instruction sites explaining how to do
things on IE/Mac.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

[Toby Inkster]

VidTheKid wrote:

Sherm Pendley wrote:

>For myself, I'm beginning to wonder about the wisdom of running a 17" CRT
at 1280x1024. :-\

There is little wisdom in that. It is a CRT monitor, therefore it is a
4:3 aspect ratio (unless it's widescreen, which would be worse) and
you're running a 5:4 ratio logical pixel resolution. As a result,
everything on your screen is squished to be about 7% fatter or 7%
shorter than it should be.

I also run a 17" CRT at 1280x1024. I suppose that technically things are
a little shorter and fatter than they ought to be, but it's only to a tiny
degree, so you get used to it.

Try 1280x960.

At 1280x960 I'd miss out on nearly 82000 pixels, so no thanks.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

[Wes Groleau]

Mark Parnell wrote:

You do realise that Mac IE is a completely different beast to Win IE?

Of course. However, it DOES have some of the same flaws ....

--
Wes Groleau

The man who says, "I can do it!" may sometimes fail.
The man who says, "Impossible!" will never succeed.

[Wes Groleau]

Toby Inkster wrote:

Wes Groleau wrote:

> - when I am working on _my_ websites, I sometimes
need to see what they look like on the <censored>
thing that half the audience is using.

Half your audience is using IE/Mac? I can't imagine there are many sites
like this -- probably not even instruction sites explaining how to do
things on IE/Mac.

If I want to see how IE on Windows screws things up,
I need to go somewhere where there's a Windows machine.
If I'm too lazy to travel that far, the closest I can
get is IE on Mac. Which often does screw things up
in a similar fashion.

Also, when someone else's site "only works in IE,"
sometimes that means IE Windows, but often it
just means IE.

--
Wes Groleau

You're all individuals!
Yes, we're all individuals!
You're all different!
Yes, we are all different!
I'm not!

("Life of Brian")

[Andy Dingley]

Wes Groleau wrote:

You do realise that Mac IE is a completely different beast to Win IE?

Of course. However, it DOES have some of the same flaws ....

Such as what ?

[Toby Inkster]

Wes Groleau wrote:

If I want to see how IE on Windows screws things up,
I need to go somewhere where there's a Windows machine.
If I'm too lazy to travel that far, the closest I can
get is IE on Mac. Which often does screw things up
in a similar fashion.

I've certainly never seen this.

If I'm on a Mac and want to know how something will look in IE/Win, I'd
have thought Safari, Firefox, Opera or iCab would be just as useful as
IE/Mac. (i.e. not very useful at all.)

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

[Sherm Pendley]

Wes Groleau <gr**********@freeshell.orgwrites:

If I want to see how IE on Windows screws things up,
I need to go somewhere where there's a Windows machine.

Or VirtualPC.

If I'm too lazy to travel that far, the closest I can
get is IE on Mac.

IE/Mac is no closer to that than Safari. IE/Mac uses an entirely different
code base. It's the same browser in name only.

Which often does screw things up
in a similar fashion.

Opera might very well do the same, and for the same reason - coincidence.

sherm--

--
Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

[Wes Groleau]

Andy Dingley wrote:

Wes Groleau wrote:

>>You do realise that Mac IE is a completely different beast to Win IE?

Of course. However, it DOES have some of the same flaws ....

Such as what ?

Could we start with the incorrect box model implementation?

--
Wes Groleau
-----------
Daily Hoax: http://www.snopes2.com/cgi-bin/random/random.asp

[Wes Groleau]

Sherm Pendley wrote:

IE/Mac is no closer to that than Safari. IE/Mac uses an entirely different
code base. It's the same browser in name only.

Name and overall appearance. And some specific details.

>Which often does screw things up
in a similar fashion.

Opera might very well do the same, and for the same reason - coincidence.

It might. I have seen Opera screw some things up.
But so far, I have not seen it screw up in the
same manner as IE.

--
Wes Groleau
-----------
Curmudgeon's Complaints on Courtesy:
http://www.onlinenetiquette.com/courtesy1.html
(Not necessarily my opinion, but worth reading)

[Sherm Pendley]

Wes Groleau <gr**********@freeshell.orgwrites:

Sherm Pendley wrote:

>IE/Mac is no closer to that than Safari. IE/Mac uses an entirely different
code base. It's the same browser in name only.

Name and overall appearance. And some specific details.

IE/Mac is a *different* *browser* than IE/Win. I've been to the MacBU at
Microsoft, and talked face-to-face with the authors. I asked them about this.
There's no code in common. None.

The fact that a site works (or doesn't work) in IE/Mac tells you absolutely
*nothing* about how it will work in IE/Windows.

sherm--

--
Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

[Wes Groleau]

Sherm Pendley wrote:

IE/Mac is a *different* *browser* than IE/Win. I've been to the MacBU at
Microsoft, and talked face-to-face with the authors. I asked them about this.
There's no code in common. None.

I won't question that at all. Nevertheless, it's not hard
to see that they obviously made an effort to imitate some
of the appearance and some of the UI behavior. And, ...

The fact that a site works (or doesn't work) in IE/Mac tells you absolutely
*nothing* about how it will work in IE/Windows.

It's certainly no guarantee, but my experience is that for
two browsers to interpret HTML or CSS significantly differently
happens less often when the two are IE/Win and IE/Mac than
when one of them is not IE.

It's a probability thing, not a "they are the same" thing.

On the other hand, I recently tried a CSS trick that the author
said would not work in IE and it DID work in IE/Mac. The author
firmly stated I was mistaken; it is impossible.

--
Wes Groleau

"A man with an experience is never
at the mercy of a man with an argument."
-- Ron Allen

[Toby Inkster]

Wes Groleau wrote:

Could we start with the incorrect box model implementation?

IE/Mac 5.x gets the box model right, though it does have a "quirks mode"
which gets it wrong -- so do most other browsers though.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

[Wes Groleau]

Toby Inkster wrote:

Wes Groleau wrote:

>Could we start with the incorrect box model implementation?

IE/Mac 5.x gets the box model right, though it does have a "quirks mode"
which gets it wrong -- so do most other browsers though.

How do you turn this mode off? Apparently it's on by default,
because I never even heard of it, and it's wrong here.

--
Wes Groleau

A bureaucrat is someone who cuts red tape lengthwise.

[Toby Inkster]

Wes Groleau wrote:

How do you turn [quirks] mode off? Apparently it's on by default,
because I never even heard of it, and it's wrong here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

[Wes Groleau]

Toby Inkster wrote:

Wes Groleau wrote:

>How do you turn [quirks] mode off? Apparently it's on by default,
because I never even heard of it, and it's wrong here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode

Hmmm. All my pages start with either HTML 4.01 strict
or XHTML 1.0 strict (all right, MOST of them). And
they generally validate (minor errors which I fix).
So according to this article, IE and all the others
should show me similar results.

Hmmm.

--
Wes Groleau
-----------

"Thinking I'm dumb gives people something to
feel smug about. Why should I disillusion them?"
-- Charles Wallace
(in _A_Wrinkle_In_Time_)

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Wes Groleau <gr**********@freeshell.orgscripsit:

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode

Hmmm. All my pages start with either HTML 4.01 strict
or XHTML 1.0 strict (all right, MOST of them). And
they generally validate (minor errors which I fix).
So according to this article, IE and all the others
should show me similar results.

The conclusion is completely wrong. Browsers should not be expected to
render a document in identical ways even if the document conforms to HTML
and CSS specifications and the browser works in the so-called standards mode
_or_ actually conforms to specifications (i.e., _really_ works by
standards). The reason is simple: different browsers should be expected to
behave differently. The presentation of a document may vary in aspects that
are not covered at all in CSS, and different browsers may use different
default style sheets.

Whether the wrong conclusion is based on a correct reasoning based on false
premises is irrelevant. Wikipedia is inherently unreliable and unstable and
should not be used as a reference of any kind.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Wes Groleau]

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Wes Groleau <gr**********@freeshell.orgscripsit:

>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode

Hmmm. All my pages start with either HTML 4.01 strict
or XHTML 1.0 strict (all right, MOST of them). And
they generally validate (minor errors which I fix).
So according to this article, IE and all the others
should show me similar results.

The conclusion is completely wrong. Browsers should not be expected to
render a document in identical ways even if the document conforms to

Careful--language barrier: 'similar' does not equal 'identical,'
and 'should' does not equal 'does.'

HTML and CSS specifications and the browser works in the so-called
standards mode _or_ actually conforms to specifications (i.e., _really_
works by standards). The reason is simple: different browsers should be
expected to behave differently. The presentation of a document may vary
in aspects that are not covered at all in CSS, and different browsers
may use different default style sheets.

Of course. But if I come to _this_ newsgroup, I am wanting
to deal with issues related to what IS covered in CSS, specifically
the CSS in _my_ stylesheet which should override the default.

Whether the wrong conclusion is based on a correct reasoning based on
false premises is irrelevant. Wikipedia is inherently unreliable and

I'll go along with that.

unstable and should not be used as a reference of any kind.

But not that. I see nothing wrong with using it to get
an idea of what _might_ be true.

Fact is, unless _I_ am in expert in a subject, I cannot
be completely certain that the author of anything is
both an expert and an honest person.

Insofar as anyone can put anything into Wikipedia,
it is probably about as reliable as Usenet.

--
Wes Groleau
----
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated
than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
-- Thomas Jefferson