[whatwg] Semantic use of the <font> element

[Bill Mason]

David Walbert wrote:
> On Apr 12, 2007, at 5:24 PM, Nicholas Shanks wrote:
> 
>> My content goes something like this:
>>
>> <span style="font-family:Helvetica">This is a sample of 
>> Helvetica</span><br>
>> <span style="font-family:Arial">This is a sample of Arial</span>
> 
> If the sense of the text absolutely depends on its being displayed in a 
> particular font, might it be better to display it in an image? Helvetica 
> and Arial are on almost every computer, but an image would leave no 
> doubt, and since the content is, essentially, the visual representation 
> of itself, an image would seem to me to be semantically appropriate.

Using an image would also avoid the issues that would come up if you 
were demonstrating a font via markup that a user doesn't happen to have 
installed.  The browser could wind up defaulting to a completely 
different font than what you were attempting to illustrate.

-- 
Bill Mason
Accessible Internet
whatwg at accessibleinter.net
http://accessibleinter.net/