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LaVonna Funkhouser asked for recommendations for monospaced, san serif
fonts for online display. Later, Geoff Hart asked why monospaced,
rather than nicely kerned proportional fonts, should even be desired.
Taking these questions in reverse order: The reasons for using a
monospaced font are usually connected to limitations in the display
being used. This is true both of online display and paper printing.
I agree that monospace is much less elegant. However, it is sometimes
a regrettable necessity.
Here is one example (and also a font suggestion). I was recently asked
to find a way to incorporate the text of several hundred ASCII files
into my FrameMaker-based documentation, and to retain the all-important
formatting in these files. That formatting consisted of line indents
that were created with spaces and/or tabs (consistency was not a concern
for the folks who created these files). After struggling with some
different approaches to resolving this problem, we finally decided to
use a monospaced font -- Courier -- and a software script that replaced
all tabs and blank spaces with hard spaces.
Courier is not a san serif font (sorry, LaVonna!) but it does work well
in Frame as a monospaced font (which I enabled by turning off the
Smart Spaces option for the relevant paragraph tags). Courier proved to be
superior for use in monospace form because it has a relatively large
character space. In the PostScript version of this font that
we use, the blank character space for Courier is defined as 0.6 em
(i.e., six-tenths the width of the "M" character).
Live long & prosper,
Mike LaTorra
Documentation Supervisor
Accugraph Inc.
mikel -at- accugraph -dot- com
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The opinions expressed are my own, ][ "There could hardly be a more
and not necessarily those of my ][ unbearable -- and more
company -- but they probably ][ irrational -- world than one
should be. ][ in which the most eminent
================================= ][ specialists in each field
Free speech ][ were allowed to proceed
================================= ][ unchecked with the realization
Free markets ][ of their ideals."
================================= ][ -- F.A. Hayek,
Free spirit ][ THE ROAD TO SERFDOM
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