Re: 120 DPI & HTML text woes

On Thu, 2 Mar 2006, RobG quoted from an article that doesn't seem to
have propagated to here:

Yeah wrote:

Combining my monitor's native resolution of 1280x1024 and the XP
setting of 120 DPI, everything else is great, but now standard
Serif on my web site looks like I'm reading a Dr. Seuss book.

AIUI, MS Serif is a bitmapped font which is available only in a
limited number of sizes. It also has a very impoverished character
repertoire. Avoid it! Search out and destroy any contexts where MS
is still trying to use it.

For example, in XP Control Panel> Display> Appearance> Advanced
and look in the various components where text size and font are
used.

In most applications, it /is/ feasible to get good results using the
custom dpi setting which calibrates the display (I used 135dpi for
quite a long time in Win2K), although there are a few applications
which are freaked-out by finding a dpi setting which isn't one of the
two standard ones. If you're not prepared for quite a bit of fiddling
and hassle, it might be better just to pick the nearest standard
setting (i.e 120dpi) as your basis, and then twiddle the fonts from
there to suit your taste, no matter how illogical it seems.

As far as web browsers are concerned, if you're worried about fonts
then you're better off using a www-compatible browser, instead of the
operating system component that thinks it's a web browser. There
/are/ browser font options that can be configured for IE, but the
consequences of doing so are quite complex, especially when a good
character repertoire is needed.

good luck
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Poor Programming when Windows cannot be resized?
    ... scale the font to 120dpi from the standard 96 dpi. ... gadgets to resize the window. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)
  • Re: Poor Programming when Windows cannot be resized?
    ... scale the font to 120dpi from the standard 96 dpi. ... gadgets to resize the window. ... When you increase DPI size you in effect zoom in which is probably ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)
  • Re: Poor Programming when Windows cannot be resized?
    ... scale the font to 120dpi from the standard 96 dpi. ... gadgets to resize the window. ... When you increase DPI size you in effect zoom in which is probably ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)
  • Re: Poor Programming when Windows cannot be resized?
    ... scale the font to 120dpi from the standard 96 dpi. ... gadgets to resize the window. ... One approach would be a batch program that would reset your font to 96 dpi before starting your Simply Accounting program and change it back to 120 dpi after you are finished using it. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)
  • Re: Large Fonts
    ... The effects vary from one machine to the next of course, but generally in Windows all True Type fonts (including the Verdana 8 point he is using) are required to be "whole pixel" values, so that on most machines if you ask for 8 point Verdana you will actually get 8.25 points. ... Similar considerations also come into effect when you switch between "Windows small fonts setting" (96 dpi) and "Windows large fonts setting". ... So in the author's specific case he would quite probably see the effect he described (the size of the "container" or button or whatever expanding by a larger percentage than the size of the font which it contains). ... In my case the height of a Command Button increased by 25 per cent, as expected, when changing from 96 dpi to 120 dpi, but the height of the font increased by only 12 per cent, but at 9 points there was virtually no difference at all between the two, and at 10 point Verdana I had the opposite effect, where the height of the Command Button increased by 25 per cent but the height of the font increased by 33 per cent. ...
    (microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion)