CHAPTER 10. FONT FAMILIES 103
Kerning tables tell the browser that it can put the letters AV closer together
than the letters VV. Each pair of letters is examined by the designer and
their ideal distance is decided. This can be especially important for cursive
fonts.
But what this also means is a font designer can release a font and someone
else, even another professional font designer, can copy its letter shapes by
coming up with a new set of mathematical instructions that looks about the
same. After all, the original digital fonts were copied from printing-press
fonts. Thus, knock-offs of fonts are commonly available.
Due to trademark restrictions, knock-offs cannot use the same name as the
original font. So alternate names are given. The font you want to use may
be available under several different names, depending on which platform the
user is running.
10.2.5 Good News, Bad News
Good News:For the commonly-used fonts, something identical or similar
is probably installed on your user’s platform.
Bad News:Even commonly-used fonts may be installed under a different
name than they are on your own platform.
Font Stacks: The current solution is to let you, the webpage designer,
specify a list of acceptable fonts. The browser will look at the list and use
the first font it can. This lets you list the font name as found on your
platform, plus the font names of similar fonts found on other platforms. See
section 10.4 (page 106) for more information.
10.3 Five Generic Font Families
CSS recognizes five generic (broad) families of fonts. They areserif,sans-
serif,monospace,cursive, andfantasy. Within each family, there are
thousands of individual fonts that have been created by font designers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontfamily(HTML)has more on font
families.
Exam Question 180(p.347): List the five generic font families.
Required Answer:serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy, monospace