RE: Units

Hi Felix,

> 1rem already exists, and could be a perfect unit for all purposes.

I remember having discussion about this with you in the 2000s. Things have moved on though. 

All the units are an abstraction layer, as Andrew's discussion referenced. All of the CSS units are relative to something, and get translated to device pixels in the end. We can't ignore non-REM units, and in fact CSS px are the most reliable current measure for testing the apparent size of web content between devices.

Anyway, I'm not going to re-hash all the old arguments, I just want to make sure people on the list know that your view is well known, but it is not representative.

Kind regards,

-Alastair



-----Original Message-----
From: Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net> 
Sent: 22 August 2019 06:22
To: public-low-vision-a11y-tf@w3.org
Subject: Re: Agenda: Low Vision Task Force 23 Aug 2019

Andrew Somers composed on 2019-08-21 21:26 (UTC-0700):

> Of course 1u does not yet exist, nor the support — for a unit like 1u 
> to be really useful, browsers, phones, etc, would need a setting where 
> the user could enter their normal preferred viewing distance, which 
> the user agent would then use with the display PPI to determine the 
> size to render 1u to make it fit to
> 22 arc minutes.

More units are not needed. All that's needed is to put a stop to abuse of existing units, and users.

1rem already exists, and could be a perfect unit for all purposes. The user picks an optimal size to equal 1rem. That choice automatically accounts for acuity and viewing distance. That size as to anyone or anything but himself becomes immutable. The computer computes how many device pixels are required to produce 1rem or any fraction or multiple thereof. No logical px unit is needed. For bitmaps, the computer computes an appropriate way to convert from pixels to rem according to context. There's no need for designers to depend on device px ratios or apply special handling for "high DPI" or any of the other kludges to pretend to accommodate varying physical densities or screen resolutions or visual acuity. In short, a web designer designs perspectives, but the user has automatic and complete control over how those perspectives translate into physical sizes.

CSS should never have included the px unit. It's the reason why the web is so hard to use, and to design for. Deprecate the px unit ASAP, and soon after eliminate its support from web design elements other than bitmap images.
--
Evolution as taught in public schools is religion, not science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Received on Tuesday, 27 August 2019 12:17:18 UTC