Re: What's an em

• From: Clive Bruton <clive@typonaut.demon.co.uk>
• Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 01:42:37 +0000
• cc: <www-style@w3.org>, <www-font@w3.org>
• Message-Id: <S.0000075863@mail.indx.co.uk>

Erik van der Poel wrote at 02/02/00 00:41

>All I
>said was that some people seem to believe that the x-height is
>important, and that's why font-size-adjust exists.

X-height is important, but it's so dependent on the typeface chosen as to 
become almost meaningless as some kind of "flex" value when that typeface 
is unavailable.

What would you do, adjust a large x-height sans to a smaller "point" size 
to fake the "perceived" size of the script it was replacing?

Isn't it conceivable that such an adjustment might actually render text 
that was meant as a headline/heading at a smaller size than continuous 
text on the same page?

>You still need to set
>an appropriate line spacing to avoid collisions.

Do you want to give an example of where you think knowing the x-height 
might be something useful?


-- Clive

Received on Tuesday, 1 February 2000 20:42:44 UTC