A brief history of the parasite font that dates from around 1989. There is also a sidebar highlighting the differences between Arial, Helvetica, and Monotype Grotesque 315, Arial's ancestor.
Posted by Numenius at December 19, 2004 09:36 PM | TrackBackHow galling, to find that I've been indirectly had by Microsoft yet again! I've been choosing Arial out of the -- what, seven? -- fonts offered by blogger in their "compose" windows, because I like clean stripped-down fonts and because (to confess the depths of my sloth) it's the first one in their drop-down list. I had no idea of its history.
Blogger does an array of bewildering things with fonts -- there's a layer between the html and the viewer, apparently, that has some, ah, interesting behaviors -- that have increasingly annoyed me. So much so that I may actually bite the bullet and figure out how it works.
Thanks for spreading the word!
Posted by: dale at December 20, 2004 10:30 AM