What fonts should(/shouldn't) I use in a WIN-MAC FM7 solution?

Thanks,

Paolo

Stick to the MS Web fonts: Andale Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Brush Script MT, Comic Sans MS, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana and Webdings.

These fonts should be pre-installed on most modern systems, and the fonts can be downloaded for free with various Microsoft products or on their own.

If you want to get hinky, there's also the open source "Bitsream Vera" font set which is a functional set of screen fonts that look quite good. If you Google them, you'll find no end of download sites. It will, of course, require your users to install those fonts if you want to use them, whereas the MS web fonts should already exist.

What about Helvetica, Geneva and Courier New?

99% of the FileMaker apps and files we do are designed to be used on WIN/MAC. We have standardized on: Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, and Times New Roman as the fonts used.

With the differences between printers, OS's, screens, etc., text will slide and break differently for each OS and font. Give your text blocks and fields extra room to allow for text float. You can also enter hard returns to get text to break where you want.

It is best to just accept that layouts and printing will not look exactly the same and either accept that or trap for the OS and screen and define separate layouts with the best fonts for each.

Paolo:

I would add Courier to the list. In my experience, Arial seems to have the most similarities between the two platforms, and thus results in the least headaches. From my point of view, it's not a very nice font, but when forced to choose between elegance and functionality, in a cross-platform database system you've got to go with functionality.

-Stanley