From: Michael D'Errico (mike-list@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Nov 02 2009 - 11:20:24 CST
Thanks for all the replies. It sounds like the unfortunate answer is
I need to use an image. I was trying to avoid that due to the need for
multiple background colors (perhaps the background can be transparent?
I'll need to look into that, and now that's way off topic -- if you
know the answer, please reply privately, thanks).
Mike
Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> vanisaac@boil.afraid.org wrote:
>
>>> My conclusion is that in cases like this, an author should create a
>>> suitable image of the character, in the intended environment–in
>>> practice, a button of the same style as those based on characters
>>> when rendered in a typical way. That is, to take an image of the
>>> button rendered using some nice font (DejaVu Sans?) and edit it in a
>>> graphics program to make it somewhat more legible.
>>
>> There is one big problem with this approach, which is that images
>> don't generally scale.
>
> Images can be scaled, and browsers have become better in this. You can
> use an image in an HTML document and set its height in em units (i.e.
> relative to font size) in CSS, and browsers will scale it accordingly
> (preserving the width to height ratio). This is not ideal, and it would
> be better to be able to use characters, but in a situation like the one
> discussed, it's probably the best approach in practice. - Besides, the
> page discussed sets font size in fixed units, thereby declaring text to
> be non-scaleable (though browsers may ignore that).
>
> The question whether we should use a character or an image is a
> practical one, not a matter of principles. When the question is raised,
> there is usually at least one considerable drawback in using a character
> - otherwise one would just use a character and not ask at all.
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