px vs. pt

What are people's views on preference?? I've become embroiled in a couple of
debates recently where people have been defending the good old "px" unit,
which I think could be potentially dangerous (well, from the point of view
of supporting people with large screens and the disabled)

For reference, the units are defined as being:
1pt == 1/72 inch (device independent for physical size)
1px == 1 pixel   (device dependent for physical size)

My personal preference would be to suggest using pt. (or pica or cm etc)

On a Windows machine with "small fonts" a screen resoultion of 72dpi is
assumed, with "large fonts" it uses 96dpi - as for other platforms, I cannot
say...
With a quick bit of maths, you can see that 1px = 1pt (on small fonts) and
if you use large fonts, then the conversion is 1px = 0.75pt

 Rowland

Today's random quote:
Going to call him William? What kind of name is that? Every Tom, Dick and
Harry's called William. Why don't they call him Bill? - Samuel Goldwyn

Received on Thursday, 27 July 2000 04:55:07 UTC