College perspective: Web and typography problems with typography

web| problem

About the font of the discussion, in fact, whether foreign or domestic, there have been a lot, but I found that most of the content or biased, or not comprehensive, the following I tried to summarize their views over a period of time, in order to put forward a relatively easy to accept the proposal of CSS font selection.

It's a matter of size.

The size of the font is always a problem that bothers people, in absolute units or relative units? Or specifically, in what unit? Ex? Em? Pt? Px? Percentage? Let's look at the instructions in the CSS 2.1 Spec:

Relative size includes: Em, ex, PX

Absolute size includes: in, CM, MM, PT, PC

EM is relative to the size of the font-size, for example Margin:1.2em is the margin that sets the width of 1.2 characters, when EM itself is used for font-size, it refers to the relative size of the elements it inherits.

Percentages are also relative to font-size.

So I think, em and percentages are not fit to set the size of the font, because there are too many factors to change each other, the modification of a place may affect many other places. Ex is based on the height of the Latin alphabet X, which is not suitable for the size of the Chinese character, so it is also deprecated. PX is based on the resolution of the current display device, the same PX corresponding to different devices-such as screen or paper-The actual size will be a certain difference.

So I think that if the page should exist as the absolute frame of reference length, then PT and PX should be preferred, the other length according to this absolute frame of reference, according to the percentage or em to change.

Here are the differences between the size of the Web page and the print. 99% of pages are used to read on the screen, and the problem is, the resolution of the screen is much lower than the paper, so if the font according to the paper printed on the size of the display, it is certainly not clear, only in terms of English fonts, many fine points, lines can not be so low in the resolution of the show, So we can only use fonts specifically designed for screen display.

The pros and cons of these fonts are difficult to comment on, and there is a view that while paper printing tends to be more readable than serif (sans-serif) fonts, serif fonts are better on the screen. So Microsoft has touted Verdana as the most suitable font for Web page use. I usually prefer to use Verdana, Arial more than times, Georgia.

For Chinese fonts The situation is different, the Chinese font on the screen clearly depends on the dot matrix font, or simply, Microsoft with Windows provided by the song and the new Song (SimSun & Nsimsun), this font is Hua Kang Company (dynalab) design, the 9pt to 12pt fonts are designed with the corresponding lattice font. The most widely used are the 9pt, 10.5pt, and 12pt fonts:

What about the characters that are bigger than this size? Depends on the operating system's font rounding (Anti-alias, hereinafter referred to as AA) technology, generally it is considered that Mac OS X and Linux under the AA than Windows ClearType much better. However, it is more dangerous to use too large a Chinese character.

It's a matter of style.

When it comes to English fonts, you can pull out a lot of anecdotes, but here's a word about WEB development.

On the Times New Roman, first of all, unlike the general reservations, the Times should not be a font suitable for long periods of reading, especially for books, as it is well known that the Times started out as a font designed for newspapers, and in order to adapt to the newspaper in the poor quality of the paper's Fast printing environment, the font line has to be exaggerated, otherwise the details are easily damaged by ink, so the times used in books is actually a very irresponsible way.

More irresponsible than this is the Times new roman,times new Roman is actually a compression (condensed) of the times, more slender than the original times, more difficult to read. The following comparison should be easier to distinguish between the pros and cons:

Comparison of times and Times New Roman

Isn't there a good font? No, Sabon, minion, Jansen-text, Adobe Caslon, Adobe Garamond, and so on are all very good fonts to read, but these fonts are commercial, that is to say, not free. There are also good quality in the fonts offered by Microsoft, such as the Palatino Linotype that Hermann Zapf personally producer. In fact, in the 35 standard PostScript fonts that Adobe chooses (Times Roman, Helvetica, Courier, Palatino, and so on), the Zapf design Palatino is the most widely used, and easiest to read, font. These fonts are provided free of charge by URW and are of good quality, unfortunately not widely used (though most of the Linux distribution include urw-fonts This package, most of the TeX distribution include URW This package).

Speaking of Palatino, we can also look at the difference between Palatino and Palatino Linotype on the Web:

Comparison of Palatino

I believe it can be seen that the high-quality Type1 font, itself with the font rounding effect, which is superior to the place of Truetype.

My advice.

What is my suggestion? I'm afraid it's a cliché:

Using PT as absolute reference frame.

Chinese fonts try to use one of the 9pt, 10.5 and 12pt.

Choose the font time, first consider Type1, and then consider Truetype, the final consideration is not the case, such as I want to use Palatino, then should be: Font-family:palatino, "Palatino Linotype", serif;