Comments on: Updating vertical metrics for cross-platform consistency

By: Richard Fink

Richard Fink — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:08:16 +0000

Tim,

You’re too young to remember the comedian Tim Conway on the TV show McHale’s Navy who, whenever stuff got technical, would interject: “Gee, I love that kind of talk.” (Gotta be clips or reruns on Youtube or Nick at Nite or somewhere.)
Anyway, thanks, very useful. Love that kind of talk.

Off to figure out the mind-bending repercussions of yet another documentMode in IE9…
Rich

By: Tim Brown

Tim Brown — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 20:37:30 +0000

In reply to Richard Fink.

Happy to share this info, although it’s not super interesting for most people. We’re constantly learning, but here’s what we know right now: Windows browsers use Win metrics, Mac browsers use hhea metrics, and Firefox on Linux uses Typo metrics unless the hhea values are greater. Win and hhea metrics must match, including an hhea linegap of zero. Typo linegap has to be zero too, or lines of text are spaced unpredictably across browsers.

The specific values to which metrics should be changed are unique to each font file. Our internal tools for foundry partners make recommendations based on the conditions I just mentioned, and also based on the maximum ascent/descent of glyphs in the font file.

By: Richard Fink

Richard Fink — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:41:51 +0000

Thanks for clarifying, Tim.
You know how I roll: any chance you’ll be publishing info on the causes and the fixes for this problem for the community at large?

By: Tim Brown

Tim Brown — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 03:01:37 +0000

In reply to Rich Carey. Thanks Rich. You can't opt out, but this is why we're looking into versioning. We want users to have total control over how and when upgrades happen. The example above is meant to show how the alignment used to differ and no longer does, but these are indeed screenshots of the typeface as rendered. They show our specimen of the font (Proxima Nova Condensed) as rendered in Safari 5 on Mac OS 10.6 and Safari 5 on Windows XP with ClearType enabled.

By: Rich Carey

Rich Carey — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 02:37:02 +0000

+1 for versioning. How can I opt out of this change?

Is the example above on the right actually showing the fonts as rendered on both platforms (which I think impossible), or is this just a diagram meant to show how the alignments used to differ and now don’t? Which platform/browser was used to render the type on the right?

By: Tim Brown

Tim Brown — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 21:37:29 +0000

In reply to Richard Fink. The former. Sorry that wasn't clear here, Rich. It's clear to our foundry partners as they review their fonts. We recommend specific measurements and explain which ones are used by which browsers.

By: Richard Fink

Richard Fink — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 21:28:14 +0000

So, does that mean the vertical metrics in the fonts have been changed to a single set of cross-browser settings?
Or are you serving fonts with different metrics to different browsers?
This isn’t clear.

By: Ray Brown

Ray Brown — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:23:55 +0000

You guys are *constantly* hitting the nail on the head. Keep up the great work, friends.

By: Rydgel

Rydgel — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:18:49 +0000

I changed my font to proxima, but the refresh doesn’t. Maybe the servers are so much busy..

By: Tim Brown

Tim Brown — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:59:47 +0000

In reply to Thijs van der Vossen. Thijs, you're absolutely right. We've been thinking a lot about versioning.