"Ma Be" wrote on 2002-07-08 05:48 UTC: > As far as *I'M* concerned (and perhaps that could also be extended to > ALL our metric supporters here!) what really matters about this "new" > thing is: HOW or WHAT UNITS of measurement does it use for its > definitions and all? > > If it's still based on the stupid, mediocre, ridiculous 1/72 of an > inch crap I know exactly where to sent them: to the garbage bin where it > belongs!!!!!
The fonts in Type1 and Truetype fonts are drawn on a dimensionless 1000x1000 or 1024x1024 square gird. The side length of this square gird is referred to as an "em". You can then scale the fonts accordingly, for example to 12 points-per-em or to 4.5 mm-per-em as you wish. The font files also contain characteristic measures such as recommended line skip, cap height, x-height, etc. in em fractions, so you can scale any of these to any desired physical dimensions. The metric typography problem is not with font file formats, it is with application software like Microsoft Office or Quark Express that support to scale fonts only in terms of points-per-em, which is in my opinion practically not very helpful, as the resulting 13 pt fonts can have significantly different cap- or x-heights. Scaling fonts in terms of cap height (hight of the letter H in millimeters) would sound like the most practical approach to me, but unfortunately, the US dominated publishing industry software hasn't managed to agree yet. Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
