Twenty Twelve: arrow in reply text renders poorly

[miqrogroove]

The "Reply" links in the Twenty Twelve theme all look like they are followed by some random garbage characters. They look more like arrows in Twenty Eleven, and they don't appear at all in my own theme. I'll attach some screen shots.

WinXP Screen Shots

Are you using Windows XP font smoothing? Or rather, why aren't you? (And, why XP?)

The &darr code can be found in the twentytwelve_comment() callback where it uses comment_reply_link(). Currently, http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/wp-content/themes/twentytwelve/functions.php#L311

I am using XP because I like it, and my computer is ancient. Font smoothing makes the text blurry and annoys me.

At least it looks like an arrow here.

Looks weird on iPad.

I vote "wontfix" on this, works fine in the vast majority of browsers and OS versions.

I think it's more that the underline combined with the down arrow, which descends below the baseline, looks a little weird, even in more modern combinations.

helenhou are there other browsers/OS examples you could screen shot?

I'm on OSX. It looks like it does in your iPad screenshot, except not HiDPI.

On OSX does it look the same in all browsers? Maybe 1 or 2 screen shots would help.

@drewstrojny What do you think about removing the underline or arrow here?

I'd say remove the arrow if it's causing issues. The basic link works just fine.

Just a thought: comment_reply_link() offers an "after" argument. Move the arrow after the link, as seen here on Trac?

Patch attached for clarity. Uncertain if arrow requires translation though.

Nope, since it's a down arrow it doesn't need to be translated. (Left or right would for RTL languages.)

That should do it then.

In 22614:

Twenty Twelve: improve arrow display in comment reply text, props miqrogroove. Also consistent styles for edit link to match reply link in color and size. Closes #22468.