Re: List cases for a cap height unit

On 10/26/11 10:03 AM, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Alan Stearns <stearns@adobe.com> wrote:
>> Even in Roman text, cap height is not any of these things:
>> 
>>  size of the text
>>  as tall as possible
>>  height of the text
>>  height of the line
> 
> Is it approximately that, or is it far off?  Would any of the
> use-cases *not work* with a cap-height unit?
> 
> ~TJ

It all depends on the font. In some fonts ascent will be significantly
taller than cap height, so a lowercase 'f' will loom above a capital "A."
What "size of the text" means is a little fuzzy - is it cap height, ascent,
the max of those, or an optic average?

The discussion so far seems to be around wanting to size things based on cap
height, which is perfectly fine. Another possible use case could be wanting
to size things based on ascent, which would require a different unit than
"cap height." I just want to be precise about what the current proposal will
be providing.

Thanks,

Alan

Received on Wednesday, 26 October 2011 17:13:36 UTC