[Biodevelopers] Re: Fonts

[David Leader]

Alex wrote;

>Points are resolution independent.  Pixels depend on your screen
>resolution.
>
>A point is roughly:
>
>     1 pica point = 0.35146 mm
>
>You really should never use pixels as you never know the display
>resolution.

This is not a web design list, but could I say this is not correct or 
pertinent advice. The questioner wanted his type to look the same 
size on different platforms and correctly used pixels to accomplish 
this. It's the only option. That size, will, of course, change with 
the screen resolution, but so will any graphical elements on the page 
as these are also specified in pixels. Generally a designer wants the 
relationship between text and graphics to remain constant and is not 
interested in its absolute size as long as the text is readable.

Points vary with the number of dpi, which certainly differs between 
Mac NN4 (72dpi) and Windows (96dpi). This is all explained in 
<http://www.alistapart.com/stories/fear4/index.html>

Although because of the limitations in zooming with Internet Explorer 
on the Windows platform (there are other browsers visually impaired 
people can use to zoom fonts specified in pixels), the accessibility 
lobby has produced an anti-pixel attitude. However one should 
recognize this for what it is.

David
-- 
_______________________________________________________________
  David P.Leader, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
  Davidson Building, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
  Phone: +44 41 330-5905                d.leader at bio.gla.ac.uk
            http://doolittle.ibls.gla.ac.uk/leader
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