Re: Making pt a non-physical unit

On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 12:05 AM, Robert O'Callahan <robert@ocallahan.org>wrote:

> My understanding from a conversation I had on #webkit is that Webkit avoids
> the problem by treating 1pt as 4/3px regardless of the display DPI. I think
> we probably need to do this in Gecko for Web compatibility reasons, and so
> for the sake of honesty in Web specifications, I propose that the definition
> of pt in CSS be altered accordingly.
>
> (At this time, I don't think we need to give up on physical units entirely;
> all the problematic sites I'm aware of are misusing pt, but not mm or in. mm
> remains useful for specifying the dimensions of touch-based interfaces.)
>

One additional question is what to do with picas. I propose keeping picas at
12 points, i.e., fixing them at 16 CSS pixels, i.e., making them no longer
be a physical unit. I'm not aware of any Web content using picas at all, so
we could leave them as physical units, but that might be unnecessarily
confusing.

Rob
-- 
"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are
healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah
53:5-6]