163180 - font help has instances that confuse font with typeface

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: Help Documentation, defect)

Description

[Brant Gurganus]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.1b) Gecko/20020816
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.1b) Gecko/20020816

There are instances in Mozilla Help for the Font preferences where the term
"font" is used when "typeface" is better.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open Preferences.
2. Go to Appearance > Fonts.
3. Click Help.

Actual Results:  
The following help is given:

    * Serif: Select a serif font you want to use for web pages.
    * Sans-serif: Select a sans-serif font you want to use for web pages.
    * Cursive: Select a cursive font you want to use for web pages.
    * Fantasy: Select a fantasy you want to use for web pages.
    * Monospace: Select a monospace font (like Courier) you want to use for web
pages. Monospace text is fixed in width, so each character or letter takes the
same amount of space.

Expected Results:  
The term "font" should be changed to "typeface."

You may also want to add the distinction that a font is a typeface at a specific
size.  This is also the reason that the change should be made.

Comment 1

[rudman]

-->jatin.

Comment 2

[Jatin Billimoria]

Thanks for the distinction. This bug will be taken into consideration for the
next revision of the product.

Comment 3

[Robert Kaiser]

MASS-CHANGE:
This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614

Comment 4

[Jens Hatlak (:InvisibleSmiley)]

According to Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font>:
"After the introduction of computer fonts based on fully scalable outlines, a broader definition evolved. Font is no longer size-specific, but still refers to a single style. Bulmer regular, Bulmer italic, Bulmer bold and Bulmer bold italic are four fonts, but one typeface."
Without citation. :-(

So even though I don't trust the Wikipedia I think the above sentence makes sense. So from my POV we should leave all cases where typeface + style is referred to as font as-is and only (optionally) check that the term "font" is not used in a completely wrong way. However I'm not a native speaker so I cannot tell for sure whether there's more to it or not.

-> Suggesting INVALID as per the above.

P.S.: I was a bit worried when I read "Select a fantasy you want to use for web pages" in the initial comment. Our current help documentation has "font" after "fantasy", though. ;-)

Comment 5

[Ian Neal]

Agreed -> INVALID.