Difference between revisions of "User:Mjb/Phonorecord copyright symbol"

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(Analysis: +details)
(Analysis: +note about MS Reference Sans Serif size)
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|-
 
|-
 
! Windows 2000
 
! Windows 2000
| MS Reference Sans Serif looks great but has no smoothing at typical screen sizes. Arial Unicode MS looks good at 7, 8, 9 and 11 pt, but other sizes have hinting irregularities. Lucida Sans Unicode looks good and may have smoothing, but at some sizes, hinting causes P to be off-center within the circle. Code2000 has many pixels missing at all sizes under 13 pt.
+
| MS Reference Sans Serif looks good, but is slightly large, and it has no smoothing at typical screen sizes. Arial Unicode MS looks good at 7, 8, 9 and 11 pt, but other sizes have hinting irregularities. Lucida Sans Unicode looks good and may have smoothing, but at some sizes, hinting causes P to be off-center within the circle. Code2000 has many pixels missing at all sizes under 13 pt.
| Code2000 and MS Reference Sans Serif look great. Lucida Sans Unicode looks good, but at some sizes, hinting causes P to be off-center within the circle.
+
| Code2000 looks good. MS Reference Sans Serif looks good, but is slightly large, and it has no smoothing at typical screen sizes. Lucida Sans Unicode looks good, but at some sizes, hinting causes P to be off-center within the circle.
 
| ''n/a''
 
| ''n/a''
 
|}
 
|}

Revision as of 19:51, 21 October 2007

The phonorecord copyright symbol is ℗ (U+2117), not ⓟ (U+24C5).

The regular copyright symbol is © (U+00A9).

Fonts on my system that contain ℗

Font 7pt 8pt 9pt 10pt 11pt 12pt 13pt 14pt 16pt 18pt
Arial Unicode MS ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗©
Code2000 ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗©
Lucida Sans Unicode ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗©
MS Reference Sans Serif ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗©


Font 7pt 8pt 9pt 10pt 11pt 12pt 13pt 14pt 16pt 18pt
MS Gothic ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗©
MS Mincho ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗©
MS PGothic ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗©
MS PMincho ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗©
MS UI Gothic ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗© ℗©

Analysis

When the requested font is not available, I believe Firefox selects the first font, in alphabetical order, that contains the glyphs. So in my case it uses Arial Unicode MS for the missing fonts. Update: After installing Code2000, it started using that, so perhaps Firefox is choosing the most-recently installed font.

OS no smoothing smoothing ClearType
Windows XP Lucida Sans Unicode looks good, but at some sizes, hinting causes P to be off-center within the circle. Lucida Sans Unicode looks great.
Windows 2000 MS Reference Sans Serif looks good, but is slightly large, and it has no smoothing at typical screen sizes. Arial Unicode MS looks good at 7, 8, 9 and 11 pt, but other sizes have hinting irregularities. Lucida Sans Unicode looks good and may have smoothing, but at some sizes, hinting causes P to be off-center within the circle. Code2000 has many pixels missing at all sizes under 13 pt. Code2000 looks good. MS Reference Sans Serif looks good, but is slightly large, and it has no smoothing at typical screen sizes. Lucida Sans Unicode looks good, but at some sizes, hinting causes P to be off-center within the circle. n/a

MS Gothic / MS PGothic / MS Mincho / MS PMincho have no hinting or smoothing, so they're basically useless.

Availability

Lucida Sans Unicode should be available on all Windows 98, 2000, XP systems. Not on Windows ME. Server 2003 and Vista status unknown.

Lucida Grande is the equivalent of Lucida Sans Unicode on Mac OS X.

MS Reference Sans Serif will only be present if Encarta or Office 2007 is installed.

Arial Unicode MS is available on Mac OS X 10.5 or higher systems. In MS Office 2000 and later, it is an optional component that can be installed manually.

Code2000 is shareware and must be manually installed.

ClearType is on by default, system-wide, for users of Windows Vista. It is also on by default in Office 2007 and IE7, even if not enabled system-wide.

More fonts to try

  • Recent versions of DejaVu Sans
  • Lucida Grande on Mac OS X
  • Lucida Sans (comes with StarOffice, JRE, maybe OpenOffice?)
  • various other pan-Unicode fonts with Letterlike Symbols support - see http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fonts.html

Recommendations

This is a work in progress.

IE7

  • font-family: Lucida Sans Unicode, MS Reference Sans Serif, Code2000, sans-serif
  • Surrounding text is Arial: & © 1984 ZTT Records Ltd.
  • Surrounding text is Franklin Gothic Book: & © 1984 ZTT Records Ltd.

All other

  • font-family: MS Reference Sans Serif, Lucida Sans Unicode, Arial Unicode MS, Code2000, sans-serif
  • Surrounding text is Arial: & © 1984 ZTT Records Ltd.
  • Surrounding text is Franklin Gothic Book: & © 1984 ZTT Records Ltd.

Notes

Both the ℗ and the © are getting the styles; otherwise the © would be in the surrounding text font and would look inconsistent.

When using MS Reference Sans Serif for the symbols, the circles are likely to be bigger than the cap height of the surrounding text, which doesn't look good. Adjusting font-size and vertical-align to percentages can help, but the cap height of the surrounding text may vary, and makes this unpredictable. In theory, vertical-align should be middle, but that results in the ℗ being at one position and the © at another, and is inconsistent from font to font anyway. Small percentage values work better.