Mail Fonts

[Jack Moore]

Hi
Could someone remind me which Mail fonts are properly respected across platforms? I like Avenir and Euphemia Ucas, but both seem to morph into Times New Roman and several point sizes larger when received by PCs or forwarded to and fro. I'm intrigued as to why this happens and would welcome suggestions for fonts and pt. sizes I should switch to that 'stick', other than TNR…
Thanks
Jack

[Drew Reece]

They change for the same reason website fonts change - if the system doesn't have it installed (or active) it's better to display something rather than nothing. For the most part it is fine, until you start using extended characters that don't translate between different platforms & font formats.

There is no font that everybody has since there are a billion and one variations of OS's, user choices & installed software. Licensing means some OS's will never have the fonts available on Macs & PC's (I don't have Avenir for example).

Stick with Helvetica on Mac & PC's will might show Arial that looks close enough (or choose to use Arial), unless they have prefs set for Times.
Verdana & Georgia are other 'old school web' fonts that may be available on older systems (and have reasonable fall-backs). If they don't like Times & their mail reader forces it upon them it's hardly your fault.

Some other old web safe fonts…
http://www.angelfire.com/al4/rcollins/style/fonts.html

You should ask whoever you are emailing if they actually care, I'd suggest people mostly want to just read the content, unless you are creating newsletters that need to look pretty, then you may be able to use html messages (and annoy the 'plain text' only users). Selecting fonts & styling (bold, underline, italics, inline links with titles) also changes messages from plain text to rich text or html which can annoy people who use old email clients.

If you want an example of how Apple may go with this feature look at iOS, 5 years on there are still no font choice in Mail, Mac OS also dropped font preferences that changed the entire UI, no way to set a default mail font…

Re:co

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[Dom Barnes]

I think you can safely say everyone* has Arial, Times New Roman and Courier. 

*who doesn't compile their own kernel.

--

Dom Barnes

http://about.me/dombarnes/bio

[Dilip Rathod - Native Systems Ltd]

I miss Chicago :-(

Dilip.

[Drew Reece]

You forgot a bit Dom…

** Windows phone has Courier New not Courier, but who cares about them or the difference between the 2 fonts?
***Android, Ubuntu or Blackberry users don't count.

R

On 2 May 2013, at 18:57, Dom Barnes wrote:

> I think you can safely say everyone* has Arial, Times New Roman and Courier**.
>
> *who doesn't compile their own kernel ***.
>

[Drew Reece]

An iPod 3G or older will help you get your fix.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Ipod_backlight_transparent.png

R

[Jack Moore]

Now I know what Chicago is/was. One cool font!
Thanks for the tips on fonts, guys
Jack

[Patrick Neame]

There was a discussion about fonts on my Filemaker forum some time ago with Verdana being touted as one that works well across Mac and PC. I can't remember what the others were as I opted for Verdana. I remember that Helvetica (Anyone else seen the documentary, by the way?) wasn't on the list as I went through my layouts changing everything from Helvetica.