Re: Why generic names like "Sans" & "Serif"?

[Jorge Fábregas <jorge fabregas gmail com>]

On Sunday 18 May 2008 04:58:20 am Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> They're not a simple alias, they can be a patchwork of fonts, and the
> composition of the patchwork for the same rules depends on the actual
> font files present on disk.

Thanks Nicolas for the help and links. One last question related to this... I 
asked this question on the fedora-list a couple of months ago but there 
wasn't a straight answer (I guess it's not possible) but I ask it here to see 
if any of you know a way.

Is there a way to know the final rendered font when viewing a page on Firefox? 
I installed the "Font Finder" extension and basically I'll highlight some 
text and it will give me the requested font for that section. Something like:

verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif

Can I assume that the final rendered font (in Firefox) is the same I'll get 
when I do:

fc-match verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif

??? It seems to be that way (having "sans-serif" for sans-serif on my Firefox 
preferences...) but if I specify a particular typeface for "sans-serif" in 
Firefox...it will not evaluate 'verdana, arial & helvetica"and it will jump 
straight to the specific font I specified in "sans-serif".

Thanks,
Jorge