Re: Screen font appearance on Macs & PCs...

["Walker, Arlen P" <Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- COM>]

     Can anyone suggest one or more fonts that look the
     same on both platforms? Or some other solution?

I'm not sure it can be done. Follow:

When the Macintosh was created, the standard printer's units declared
there were 72 points to the inch (well, OK, 72 and just a smidgeon more).
Therefore, to fit in well in the publishing industry, the Macintosh was
designed to render fonts based on 72 points to the inch.

When Windows was created, Microsoft showed its usual respect for
established standards: they ignored them completely. The state of the art
of DOS-based video resulted in about 96 pixels to the inch on the display,
therefore Microsoft designed Windows to render fonts at 96 points to the
inch.

This fundamental difference means that no two fonts will render exactly
the same on screen. (It's also the best reason why a web developer has no
business dictating the absolute size of the type used in a site's pages,
but should rather leave that choice to the client.)

What you're in effect looking for is a font which will render with the
same readability despite being shown at two completely different sizes,
something which is nearly impossible to do. Your best bet is probably to
examine some of the sans serif fonts (Verdana comes to mind as a
possibility, or perhaps some of the web fonts). Serifs don't survive well
under these circumstances.

Another idea is to insist on having ATM installed on every machine, and
then use a postscript font for which there isn't a TrueType equivalent
installed. Going through the Adobe font rendering engine lessens some of
the differences.

Finally, you can limit some of the effects with some design decisions in
the user interface. For example, since you already know that the same
label will take up different amounts of pixels on each platform, never
design the label's container to exactly enclose the label, but rather
allow for a comfortable margin around it. For example, let's say the final
difference between platforms is 25 pixels for a given label. If the
container leaves only 25 pixels of space total around the label, then the
whitespace on one platform will be twice that. OTOH, if the container is
designed to look good with 100 pixels of whitespace, then the effect of
stepping that up to 125 (25% expansion, instead of 100%) won't be so
jarring.


Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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