Re: Length unit relative to media width

GS [junkmail.gs@c2i.net] (presumably non-repliable) wrote:
 
> The unit should be relative to the screen (or paper) width.

I would say that any such unit should be referenced to the viewport
width; users should not be forced to go full screen.  Even better might
be to reference it to the calculated value of the width of the containing
block, making it something like a reciprocal of em; em allows one to
recover the current calcualted value for the font dimension into the 
height and width dimensions, whereas this proposal seems a way of
recovering height and width information into the font size dimension.
 
> I suggest those units:
>    sw8      = (screen.width  /    800 ) px;

I see no case for more than one such unit.  If the use of fractions is
undesirable, use something like a milli-width.

> On a 1024 x 768 screen resolution, this font-size would be 31px  (rounded upward)
 
I see no reason to use any other rounding rules than those already used to decide
font sizes, which are not constrained to integral pixel sizes and which may constrain 
the calculated value to an appropriate minimum size (typically about 5x7 pixels for 
Latin characters).

In general, designers should be cautioned that users can turn off font size control;
I do, because the prevalence of the use of fonts below the initial normal font size.
(I cannot remember if there is a minimum font size property, but there ought to be.)

Received on Wednesday, 19 February 2003 06:34:23 UTC