- From: Christoph Päper <christoph.paeper@crissov.de>
- Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 21:34:16 +0200
- To: www-style@w3.org
In <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/metric-typo/> Markus Kuhn writes
about metric font sizes. You can use 'font-size' with millimetres and
centimetres already, which is good, but I wonder whether we could add
|q| as an alias for quarter an millimetre like according to that
document Japanese typographers traditionally use (the linked source
is a 404 though) and DIN 16507-2 proposes as a modulus.
(I hope nobody takes this as an excuse to request |dd| for Didot
points of about three eighths of an millimetre, 0.376mm.)
<hr/>
I further thought a bit about font size keywords (currently |
smaller|, |larger| and |xx-small| through |xx-large|) and whether one
could incorporate traditional, irregular type size names (think X11^W
SVG colour names). Just for fun, actually. This table, based upon the
one from the aforementioned article, is what I came up with, using
Wikipedia and <http://www.sizes.com/tools/type.htm> and inserting
some Continental names (in brackets), where English ones weren't
enough. (It wouldn't have been any effort to just list the English
point--name relations, this one is metrified.)
Font Size | Font Height Font Size Name
(mm) (Q) | (mm) (pt)
---- --- + ---- ---- -------------------------------
1 4 | 0.7 2.0 Excelsior, Minikin
1¼ 5 | 0.9 2.6 Brilliant
1½ 6 | 1.1 3.1 Diamond
1¾ 7 | 1.3 3.6 Pearl
2 8 | 1.4 4.1 Agate, Ruby
2¼ 9 | 1.6 4.6 Nonpareil; Emerald, Minionette
2½ 10 | 1.8 5.1 Minion/Mignon; (Insertia)
2¾ 11 | 2.0 5.6 Brevier
3 12 | 2.2 6.1 (Colonel)
3¼ 13 | 2.3 6.6 Bourgeois
3½ 14 | 2.5 7.1 Long Primer
3¾ 15 | 2.7 7.7 (Corpus, Garmond)
4 16 | 2.9 8.2 Small Pica
4¼ 17 | 3.1 8.7 Pica
4½ 18 | 3.2 9.2 (Cicero)
5 20 | 3.6 10.2 English; (Medium)
5½ 22 | 4.0 11.2 Columbian
6 24 | 4.3 12.2 Great Primer; (Tertia)
7 28 | 5.0 14.3 Paragon
8 32 | 5.8 16.3 Double Small Pica
9 36 | 6.5 18.4 (Double Cicero)
10 40 | 7.2 20.4 Double English
12 48 | 8.6 24.5 Double Great Primer
14 56 | 10.1 28.6 Double Paragon
16 64 | 11.5 32.7 Meridian / Trafalgar
18 72 | 13.0 36.7 Canon; (Concordance)
20 80 | 14.4 40.8 (Missal)
22½ 90 | 16.2 45.9 (Sabon)
25 100 | 18.0 51.0
27½ 110 | 19.8 56.1
30 120 | 21.6 61.2
35 140 | 25.2 71.4
Using the CSS 2.1 draft one can relate these somewhat to current names.
15.7 Font size: the 'font-size' property
/* font[size="7"] {font-size: ;}*/
h1, font[size="6"] {font-size: xx-large;}
h2, font[size="5"] {font-size: x-large;}
h3, font[size="4"] {font-size: large;}
h4, font[size="3"] {font-size: medium;}
h5, font[size="2"] {font-size: small;}
/* {font-size: x-small;}*/
h6, font[size="1"] {font-size: xx-small;}
(There really should have been a 1:1 relationship.)
Appendix D. Default style sheet for HTML 4
h1 {font-size: 2.00em;}
h2 {font-size: 1.50em;}
h3 {font-size: 1.17em;}
h4 {font-size: 1.00em;}
h5 {font-size: 0.83em;}
h6 {font-size: 0.75em;}
(Should 'font' be handled in the HTML4 CSS, by the way?)
A common default font size (|medium|, |1em|) is 16px or 12pt (= 1pc),
which is exactly the same at 96dpi. That data combined gives us:
px pt pc mm
-------- ----- -- ---- ----- ------------
xx-large 32 24 2 8.467 Double Pica
x-large 24 18 1.5 6.350 Great Primer
large 18.67 14 1.17 4.953 English
medium 16 12 1 4.233 Pica
small 13.33 10 0.83 3.514 Long Primer
x-small - - - - -
xx-small 12 9 0.75 3.175 Bourgeois
Rounded to metric values and using my name table above instead of the
one from the 19th century:
mm Q em
-------- ---- -- ---- ---------------------------
xx-large 8.50 34 2 (Double Pica)
x-large 6.25 25 1.47 (Great Primer, Tertia: 24q)
large 5.00 20 1.18 English
medium 4.25 17 1 Pica
small 3.50 14 0.82 Long Primer
x-small - - - -
xx-small 3.25 13 0.76 Bourgeois
There sadly is neither a round pt nor Q size for |x-small|.
In the standard Mac OS X font selection you find these pt sizes
predefined, other software uses similar values:
pt in mm ~mm ~Q
--- ----- ------- ----- ------ --------------------
9 1/8 3,175 3-3¼ 12-13 Bourgeois
10 5/36 3,528 3½ 14 Long Primer
11 11/72 3,881 3¾-4 15-16 Small Pica
12 1/6 4,233 4¼ 17 Pica
13 13/72 4,586 4½ 18 (Cicero)
14 7/36 4,939 5 20 English
18 1/4 6,35 6¼ 25-26 Great Primer
24 1/3 8,467 8½ 34 Double Pica
36 1/2 12,7 12½ 50 Double Great Primer
48 2/3 16,933 17 68 Canon
64 8/9 22,578 22½ 90
72 1 25,4 25 100 (Inch)
96 4/3 33,867 33¾ 135 (Double Canon)
144 2 50,8 50 200
288 4 101,6 100 400
Received on Tuesday, 22 August 2006 19:34:22 UTC