[WEB4LIB] Re: Fonts

[Thomas Dowling]

At 10:56 AM 8/8/2002, Walt_Crawford at notes.rlg.org wrote:

>We've consistently found that, at least in IE (and apparently in Netscape
>and Opera, but it's harder to be sure), the browser automatically switches
>between the user-chosen typeface and the nearest Unicode-equipped
>alternative as required by the text--even switching back and forth within a
>single field (e.g., dates in an Arabic or Hebrew entry, where there's also
>directionality switching). We were a little surprised by that, but it
>helped our decision not to force typeface.

Opera and Mozilla know at least one Unicode trick the IE doesn't.  If a 
font does not contain a glyph for the specified character, Opera and 
Mozilla will display the right glyph from another system font.  IE just 
shows a placeholder.

Thank goodness no one here would be gullible enough to try '<font 
face="symbol">abg</font>' as a cheap hack for &alpha;&beta;&gamma;.  :->




Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu