Re: Fonts to present phonology in IPA at web pages

> Van:  Christophe Grandsire
>
> En réponse à Almaran Dungeonmaster <dungeonmaster@...>:
> >
> > My favorite method is to use PDF files. They have a cross-platform
> > consistent layout, most people have some version of acrobat readre
> > installed
> > (or they can download it for free), it guarantees that your text comes
> > out
> > exactly as you designed it, and it can be stored easily.
>
> It's unfortunately quite slow to download, very user-unfriendly in the way
> Acrobat Reader takes over your browser, making sometimes the  whole
computer
> very slow (and I use a Pentium III at work. Only on my Pentium 4 2GHz at
home I
> see nearly no slowdown). PDF files are nice for sending files, but I don't
think they are nice for browsing.

We've had this discussion before. Whether it is slow to download or not,
depends on the size of the file. PDF files are smaller than, for instance
Word or Postscript files, but if you include many graphics and/or, they can
become quite large.
I never read PDF files in my browser, I just have it load Adobe Acrobat (or
possibly Acrobat Reader) as a helper application and view it from there. And
the added slowness is by far outweighed the advantage by the cross-platform
compatibility, consistent layout and printer friendliness, especially as
computers and connections are getting faster by the day...

>  The only problem is that it is not easy to create PDF files, but if need
be, I can create
> > PDFs from PostScript files for anyone who wants me to (unless this means
I
> > will be getting 20 files a day to convert).
>
> Well, I can make PDF files from TeX files or DVI files (and my
installation of
> MikTeX is complete, so I can normally read anything that has been  made
with
> it), but when the fonts used are a little exotic (like the Greek  Archaic
fonts
> I'm using for a little Astou grammar I'm writing), the result in PDF is
not
> very beautiful. Does it work well in your case?
Well, my PDF documents usually look much more clean and consistent than any
webpage. I have some troubles with lines having a varyiable thickness when I
print tables from MS Word, but the problem is only on screen, not in
printing. If you use a good distiller (and not just a simple PDF printer
driver) which embeds the fonts used, you should have no problem. I have
created PDF files of documents made using very wriggly, homemade fonts, and
they come out perfectly.

Maarten

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