7, 8, and 9 lines displayed with the 7-line fontNothing produces an accurate display representation than a wide range of screen font sizes. On the other hand, nothing affects system performance faster than a large number of screen fonts. Therefore, the selection of screen fonts must balance desired display quality with system performance.
For example, consider two computers with different screen-font configurations. Computer A contains the screen font sizes 7, 10, and 16 lines. Computer B contains the sizes 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 lines. If the user creates a page using all the fonts from Computer B, the differences in sizes will be visible. However, the computer will load 12 screen fonts to display the page.
On Computer A, with doubling and tripling capabilities disabled, the computer displays the same range of sizes as follows:
7, 8, and 9 lines displayed with the 7-line font
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 lines displayed with the 10-line font
16, 17, and 18 lines displayed with the 16-line font
Much of the WYSIWYG would be lost because several sizes are displayed with the same font. However, the computer only loaded three fonts to display the page.
Computer B slowly displayed high quality, while Computer A quickly displayed poor WYSIWYG quality.
A font vendor needs to consider the application the user will run with Windows. For example, Microsoft Excel generally uses body-size fonts (fonts in the size range of 8 to 12 points). Therefore, a wide range of font sizes is unnecessary. And Aldus PageMaker, although it uses a large range of sizes, switches to vector fonts above 24 lines (that is, the default “Vector text above” setting).
Ideally, the user should decide which is more important: display quality or performance. Many font products contain a font generator that requires the user to specify which point sizes to build. For such programs, the user should be given the option to select a predetermined range of sizes.
| Range | Sizes |
| Publishing | 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 18, and 24 lines. |
| Artwork | 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 21, 24, 28, and 32 lines. |
| General use | 8, 10, 12, 18, and 24 lines. |
If the font-creation program requires the user to indicate exactly which sizes should be built (that is, there are no predetermined ranges), then the documentation should provide specific instructions on what numbers to enter, based upon the user's needs, or intended use for the product.
For font packages that give the user no choice in the size range, the vendor should supply the “Publishing” size range of 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 18, and 24 lines.