Re: What's an em

This is a general reply to a few recent comments, you can work out for 
yourselves which is applicable where if you've been following this, and 
if you haven't then you probably won't care either way.

     Yes, measure with ems.

     Please apply some "real world" logic to this, differentiation of
     Helvetica/Frutiger/Arial/Verdana/Gill/Futura at typical screen
     sizes is difficult in the extreme - to campaign for diversity
     in this environment seems to challenge the facts.

     The x-height analysis in the CSS spec has a high degree of
     bogosity. Not only does it attempt to justify itself by 
     rendering type as image, it also displays such disparate 
     examples to make the contrasted values meaningless.

     The differences in pixel rendered x-heights between any of 
     the above named sans serifs at text use sizes, as typical 
     on screen, is negligible.

     Text should be rendered to screen by specialised rasterisers
     which examine hint data and thus grid-fit the results - this
     necessarily homogenises text output for screen.

     You don't have to be big to be bold.


-- Clive

Received on Wednesday, 16 February 2000 13:43:16 UTC