Re: Making pt a non-physical unit

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Jonathan Kew <jonathan@jfkew.plus.com>wrote:

> If we're going to give up the "physical" meaning of pt, and redefine it as
> 4/3px, then I suggest that we should - for the sake of consistency and
> designers' sanity - redefine all the "physical" units in the same way, so
> that 1in remains 72pt, etc. So pc, in, cm, mm, and perhaps a few others (I
> haven't checked the list) will all change in a coherent way.
>
> For those specialized use cases such as "life size" drawings, touch
> interface elements, etc., where a certain physical size really is intended -
> rather than a physical size that made sense on a typical computer monitor or
> a piece of paper, but should be appropriately scaled when viewing from 6
> inches on a phone - I propose that we introduce a new keyword "true". This
> may be prefixed to any of these existing units, and means that the dimension
> IS to be interpreted as a true physical size, not scaled according to
> display size/resolution. (Though it would of course still be subject to
> overall zooming of the entire laid-out page.)
>
> If allowing an extra optional keyword between the number and units is
> syntactically difficult, we could instead define new units "truept",
> "truein", "truecm", etc.
>

I think that would be syntatically necessary, yes.

This sounds OK to me. I think we wouldn't want "truept" though. Probably
"truemm", "truecm" and "truein" would be enough.

I don't know that this is really necessary, though. I think leaving 'in',
'mm' and 'cm' as physical units would be OK too.

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
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