Comic Sans was An alternative history... 4299

Joe,

There isn't one - at least you won't find "Comic Sans" in any RFC that I know of. The ONLY "standard" regarding what fonts should be there is what uSoft has put out. Some RFC (there is NO adequate semantic index of them and I don't have any good excuse to spend a couple of hours searching for it) says that users are to coordinate to have the same fonts. uSoft, being the *ONLY* such actual coordination (not counting people like Apple who don't supply free fonts for other systems), then becomes the defacto standard that is IMPLIED but NOT directly stated by the RFC, which of course was written BEFORE uSoft put out their web fonts.

That gets you down to 10 fonts. Now, start looking around to see what is also available on a minimum Windows install, what is in common use, and select one of each of the fonts with different characteristics, e.g. Comic Sans is handprint, sans, and proportional. For example as a vaguely recall, the 10 web fonts includes BOTH Arial AND Helvetica, and Arial is in MUCH more common use. That gets you down to the 4 fonts.

I know, ugly, but that is often as good as it gets with the crummy RFCs.

Obviously, some other implementers have NOT done their homework - or have they?! What do these other computers actually display when Comic Sans is specified? If it is some sort of handprint, then they DID do their homework because there is NO requirement that fonts look exactly the same from one computer to the next. Unfortunately, none of the posters here who have stated that they do not have Comic Sans have yet mentioned how my web page displays on their computer.

Also, anyone running on a pre-'98 system MUST be running on a rather old browser - probably one that predated uSoft's release of web fonts. There is LOTS of software out there that may have been conforming when it was released, but which is now nonconforming to later RFCs.

Yes, I know that those old systems can do some neat things, e.g. '95 can send a "Ping of rest" simply by specifying the appropriate parameters to a ping command - which uSoft protected against on later systems.

However, anyone who hasn't purchased later hardware for general use OBVIOUSLY isn't using their computer enough to have worn out their monitor, keyboard, cooling fan, etc., by now. Without recent software, it amazes me that people waste their time arguing "standards" issues when their antique software ABSOLUTELY MUST be noncomplient. Indeed, doesn't Windows 3.1 predate Comic Sans?!

Also, as I stated on my prior posting, it is IMPOSSIBLE to account for all possible non-conforming systems, so only a fool tries, unless of course the non-conformance is widespread as is common in a number of areas. For example, there are some extensions that are SO common that everyone simply presumes that they are there, even though there is no RFC for them. In one case, NNTP protocols, an RFC was issued whose only purpose was to document NNTP extensions that are in common use that are NOT in prior RFCs, without any suggestion of proposing anything new!

I recommend going back and re-reading the posting that you responded to here, because this stuff is obviously a LOT more subtle than you have yet realized. Without that realization, your postings needlessly make you out as a fool, which I suspect that you are not.

It would also help to look at some RFCs just to see just HOW bad they really are!

Steve Richfie1d