The launch of Microsoft's new interoperability principles have been both cautiously welcomed and sceptically scrutinised as the company goes about convincing the IT industry that it is genuine in its pursuit to provide interoperability with rival products, more consumer choice, less vendor lock-in and greater collaboration with the open source community.
Here, Microsoft Australia CTO Greg Stones gives some obviously polished PR-approved responses to questions from Computerworld regarding the motivations behind support for ODF and PDF, what the software giant is really gaining by providing support to rival formats, and the ambiguities in its Open Specification Promise. He also gives a painfully polished response to CNN's senior editor's claims that the company is trying to eliminate free software.Typical Microsoft PR response to tough questions, but interesting nonetheless....
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Member since:2005-07-06
You prove my point exactly. I was using a default Firefox install on a Suse Linux system. Normally there is no problem on websites, but yet, you think I need to add/change fonts on my machine just so that I can look at it the same way someone else can on a different setup ?
This is another example of Microsoft and standards, and another example of someone not blaming Microsoft, but assuming the problem was caused by HOW they used the computer.....
Member since:2006-02-05
Verdana is an MS font, but Arial and Helvetica are both industry standards. If none are on your machine, it defaults out to however sans-serif is configured on your machine.
A) Suse should include Arial and/or Helvetica, as they are required for any remotely serious work in anything even related to type.
B) Suse should configure its system to use a sans-serif font that doesn't look like complete and total garbage something in between point sizes
The full css rules for the text is
font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
font-size:70%;
line-height:140%;
margin:0px;
padding:0px 0px 1em;
That is very standard stuff, and should both look nice and be readable on any os set up even remotely well. The worst thing you can say is that they put verdana as the first choice on the list, but I don't think that is really worth complaining about.
The reason it looks like ass on your computer is freetype and/or your sans-serif font is dying painfully trying to rendor in between points (as it is set to 70% rather then a specific size) I don't think MS should have to take this into account, it is like complaining that a website sucks because you have a hard time using it as your browser doesn't support images, or javascript, or css.
Edited 2008-06-18 22:19 UTC
Member since:
2006-02-05
A quick peek at the css shows us that the font-family is set to Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif. Verdana is very readable at smaller sizes, arial and helvetica are ok, but it look like you are defaulting to your systems sans-serif, which is probably bitstream something or other with anti-aliasing not played with.
If you want the web to look right, do yourself a favor and install the ms core fonts. If you dont want to do that, at least set your system defaults to something better then what its at now.