On 2009/03/15 10:27 (GMT-0400) Tim Climis composed: > It seems that this whole font sizing mess boils down to the fact that "pixel" > is not a standardized unit of measure. one pixel on my monitor is a > different > size from one pixel on your monitor.
Exactly the reason it's best to size nothing important in px. > But a point is a standardized unit of measure. it's 1/72 of an inch. And an > inch is 0.0254 meters. And meters are well defined. This is also true, except on a computer display. Most computer displays have a physical amount of px per inch or cm that varies widely, from less than 40/in in some environments to more than 200/in at the other extreme. The heart of the range last century when the internet took off was much lower than it is today, around 70 or so then, closer to 90 today, with a wider variation today than yesteryear. The most popular operating systems though, assume a fixed amount of px/in, usually 96. Thus on a computer display the value of an inch or cm is a logical one, not a physical one. The disparity between a typical logical inch and a real inch used to average much higher than it does today. In context, this meant that text that would print at 12pt would typically display on screen at a seemingly gargantuan real 16pt or more. Today, with higher average display DPI, it's about as likely that 12pt will display smaller than print than it would larger. > ...it stands to reason that if you want your fonts to be 10pt (which is > normal I want my fonts to be what I can read, not what you think "looks good". It's my puter. CSS is designed to suggest, not mandate. > for print media) instead of 12 or 16pt (which is the common default size at > the most common monitor resolutions) 12pt (IE) or 16px (Safari, Gecko), big difference from 16pt. > why not just set the font size to 10pt? At least four reasons: 1-As explained above, a pt on a computer display is a logical size that varies quite a bit among environments. 2-Like px, pt sizing totally disregards user preference, which is rude. 3-Usability experts recommend 10pt as a minimum size, a size below which no page content should go below, including "fine print". 4-IE's text sizer has no effect on pt (or px) sized text. As to why 96 assumed instead of 72: http://blogs.msdn.com/fontblog/archive/2005/11/08/490490.aspx -- "The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty." Proverbs 21:5 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
