European vs US points (was: Re: @page { size: A4 })

Hello Håkon, everyone,

2003-04-13T17:25:26Z Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com> wrote:

> Also sprach Alexander Savenkov:

>  > I'm fed up with 'pt' values that are ruining the traditional European
>  > typography nowadays. People are looking forward for a fix (a new unit
>  > or a clarification about US/European points). THAT would be nice.

> I agree that the pt unit is troublesome in style sheets, but is the
> difference between US/European point a real problem in this day & age?
> Could you expand a bit, and relate your argument to [1]?

>   [1] http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/archives/HTML-WG/html-wg-95q2.messages/0315.html

Actually, I have little idea about typography. I don't really
understand what you mean by "troublesome", as I don't know as
much about CSS as you do. I've seen an article (see an excerpt below)
which promotes the same idea with the letter you pointed me to.

It's well known that the traditional European "point" is larger than
that of the US. E.g, Russian OST 29.124-94 (local std. body) sets the
point size to 0,3759 mm, while according to CSS2 "pt" is around
0,352(7). Note that this is just an example and I suspect other
countries also have this convention adopted.

Currently, a person willing to produce a printed page with fine
typography has to convert the American points (if printing outside the
States). A citation from a typography-related site (translated):

<quote>
The typographic system was invented in 1785 by Didot who was French.
The basis for the system is French inch as by that time the metric
system was not adopted yet...

...The main units of the typographic system are point (1/72 of the
French inch), ...

...1 point = 1/2660 m = 0,3759 mm...

...Note that computers primarily employ Anglo-American point which is
0,3528 mm. You can convert American points to real ones:
1 American point = 0,9348 real point, or
1 real point = 1,0697 American point.
</quote>

I'm almost sure it has been discussed already (no time to look thru
the archives), hope you can forgive me for bringing it up again.

It would be great if the standard European points are finally in CSS.
Can the CSS WG allocate resources to investigate into this matter?

Best regards,
Alex.
-- 
  Alexander "Croll" Savenkov                  http://www.thecroll.com/
  w3@hotbox.ru                                     http://croll.da.ru/

Received on Monday, 14 April 2003 11:48:49 UTC