Re: font sizes in ems

On Jul 17,  1:07pm, Gayle Kidder wrote:

> Another typographer friend of mine has this to say:
>  "[Designating font sizes in ems] is literally nonsensical in
> traditional terms.  An em is a unit of space; 12pt is a unit of size ...
> it is meaningful to say "a 12-pt em" or "a 12-pt font" but not a "1-em
> font" -- the size of the em varies according the size of the font, not
> vice versa."

That is because typographers (for print media) do not need to think in
terms of inheritance, wheras designers for online media do.

The size of the em does indeed vary according to the size of the font;
that is what makes it valuable.

-- 
Chris Lilley, W3C                          [ http://www.w3.org/ ]
Graphics and Fonts Guy            The World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/people/chris/              INRIA,  Projet W3C
chris@w3.org                       2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
+33 (0)4 93 65 79 87       06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France