Confused about styling KBD and SAMP (author-user conflict)

[Stan Brown]

I want these to be in monospace, but monospace fonts are typically
bigger looking than proportional fonts so I want to reduce the font
size a bit. This leads me as an author to write

kbd, samp { font-family: monospace; font-size: 90% }

But _because_ monospace fonts are typically too big, as a user
browsing other authors' Web pages I've told Mozilla to render
monospace as 15px (compared to 17px for serif and sans).

Here's the conflict: Mozilla seems to apply that 90% not to the
font-size of the enclosing <p> but rather to the 15px user
specification. So I end up with monospace text that is too small.
But if I don't assign a font size, then users who never set their
monospace size see monospace that is too big.

What's wrong in my thinking here? Please understand that I'm not
asking a Mozilla question; I just mentioned Mozilla as an
illustration of what one browser does. My question is how I, as an
author, should style KBD and SAMP so that the size of monospace
looks about right, namely ust a bit less tall than the surrounding
normal text.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Rijk van Geijtenbeek]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 08:02:44 -0400, Stan Brown
<th************@fastmail.fm> wrote:

I want these to be in monospace, but monospace fonts are typically
bigger looking than proportional fonts so I want to reduce the font
size a bit. This leads me as an author to write

kbd, samp { font-family: monospace; font-size: 90% }

But _because_ monospace fonts are typically too big, as a user
browsing other authors' Web pages I've told Mozilla to render
monospace as 15px (compared to 17px for serif and sans).

Here's the conflict: Mozilla seems to apply that 90% not to the
font-size of the enclosing <p> but rather to the 15px user
specification. So I end up with monospace text that is too small.
But if I don't assign a font size, then users who never set their
monospace size see monospace that is too big.
IIANM, *all* browsers set a slightly smaller default size for monospaced
fonts. So if you do nothing to the paragraph font size, it should work.
And I assume all browsers will scale the monospaced font up and down when
the container has a different font-size, but I haven't tested that.
What's wrong in my thinking here? Please understand that I'm not
asking a Mozilla question; I just mentioned Mozilla as an
illustration of what one browser does. My question is how I, as an
author, should style KBD and SAMP so that the size of monospace
looks about right, namely ust a bit less tall than the surrounding
normal text.

--
Rijk van Geijtenbeek

The Web is a procrastination apparatus:
It can absorb as much time as is required to ensure that you
won't get any real work done. - J.Nielsen

[Philip Ronan]

Stan Brown wrote:

Here's the conflict: Mozilla seems to apply that 90% not to the
font-size of the enclosing <p> but rather to the 15px user
specification. So I end up with monospace text that is too small.
But if I don't assign a font size, then users who never set their
monospace size see monospace that is too big.

Not necessarily. My browser uses a mixture of Lucida Sans, Lucida Bright and
Lucida Sans Typewriter fonts that all have more or less identical x-heights.
I'd appreciate it if you could just leave them as they are.

And presumably there are other people besides yourself who have set up
Mozilla to use a smaller point size for monospace text.

I think it would be safer to leave the choice of font sizes up to your
visitors. I imagine that most of the people who would be bothered by the
sort of problem you mentioned will already have found their own solution.

Phil

--
Philip Ronan
ph***********@virgin.net
(Please remove the "z"s if replying by email)

[Stan Brown]

"Rijk van Geijtenbeek" <ri**@operaremovethiz.com> wrote in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets:

And I assume all browsers will scale the monospaced font up and down when
the container has a different font-size, but I haven't tested that.

I thought I had tested it, but I've now done some additional testing
and I think I was wrong before.

This time around I used some really extreme values, like
p { font-size: 300% }
to help me see what's going on. Yes, my Mozilla (1.7 on Win98) does
scale the monospaced font to match the containing paragraph. The
author style sheet does seem to be honored over the "15 px" in the
Mozilla preferences.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Stan Brown]

"Philip Ronan" <ph***********@virgin.net> wrote in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets:

Stan Brown wrote:

Here's the conflict: Mozilla seems to apply that 90% not to the
font-size of the enclosing <p> but rather to the 15px user
specification. So I end up with monospace text that is too small.
But if I don't assign a font size, then users who never set their
monospace size see monospace that is too big.

Not necessarily. My browser uses a mixture of Lucida Sans, Lucida Bright and
Lucida Sans Typewriter fonts that all have more or less identical x-heights.
I'd appreciate it if you could just leave them as they are.

Fair enough.

As I mentioned in response to Rijk's note, I was somehow working
from a false premise. On further testing it does appear that I was
wrong and Mozilla uses the style sheet rather than that pixel size
set in Edit>>Preferences. Specifically, if I try styling <p> as 300%
size then the enclosed monospace gets bigger too.

Therefore I guess there's no need for any font-size in my style
sheet for KBD and SAMP, not even 100%.

Thanks to you both for responding.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Brian]

Stan Brown wrote:

This time around I used some really extreme values, like
p { font-size: 300% }
to help me see what's going on. Yes, my Mozilla (1.7 on Win98) does
scale the monospaced font to match the containing paragraph. The
author style sheet does seem to be honored over the "15 px" in the
Mozilla preferences.

Unless I've misunderstood you, the 15px you set in prefs is the size of
monospaced fonts where font-size is 100%. If you change that (e.g. in an
author stylesheet), the font size changes with it. This is no different
then serif or sans font sizes in Moz prefs: the size you set as user is
the size of text where the author has not set a font-size (or set it to
100%).

--
Brian (remove "invalid" to email me)

[Brian]

Stan Brown wrote:

I want these to be in monospace, but monospace fonts are typically
bigger looking than proportional fonts so I want to reduce the font
size a bit. This leads me as an author to write

kbd, samp { font-family: monospace; font-size: 90% }

But _because_ monospace fonts are typically too big, as a user
browsing other authors' Web pages I've told Mozilla to render
monospace as 15px (compared to 17px for serif and sans).
I think all browsers set monospaced fonts smaller than proportional
fonts by default. In fact, I find monspaced font size too small as
configured out of the box.
What's wrong in my thinking here?
You're treating monospaced differently than proportional.
My question is how I, as an author, should style KBD and SAMP so that
the size of monospace looks about right, namely ust a bit less tall
than the surrounding normal text.

I wouldn't style it at all, or rather, I would not style it smaller. The
rules for main body font applies to monospaced, too. FWIW, I've styled
KBD to be a bit bigger on one page I authored to be sure that visitors
could view it.

--
Brian (remove "invalid" to email me)