Re: Making pt a non-physical unit

2010/1/6 Felix Miata <mrmazda@earthlink.net>:
> On 2010/01/07 00:10 (GMT) Jonathan Kew composed:
>
>>  As for truept: I should be able to specify a touch-screen interface element as being 8 truemm high, and put some text inside it using a font-size of 14 truept.
>
> A touch screen for POS would be an exception to the general rule because of
> the level of actual control, but certainly you shouldn't if you as stylist
> are targeting normal screen media where you can't be aware of the user's
> requirements or environmental characteristics. That's what's wrong with
> today's web and the sizing in px that overwhelms it. The ultimate size for
> the web should be controlled by the user, and no more than once per
> installation, by declaring a preferred/base text size. Everything else should
> be relative to that, in order that the maximum number of users can be happy,
> and web objects be accessibly and usably sized for all sighted users of true
> personal computers. That base/reference size can only be determined by the
> user. If the actual size of a pt as a non-physical unit for screen media
> turns out to be readily controllable by the user, then I'm in favor of its
> implementation. It should then be easy for those familiar with sizing in pt
> via print media expertise to transfer that knowledge to screen media styling
> that adapts to sizes that work for users just as well as em-based sizing.

I still don't get why we should dump pt and px.

If you have inline images that act as text, you want the text to be
sized in px to accomodate the images, because doing it the other way
wouldn't be degradable. You want pt to act as a unit.

If you complain about text being unreadable because the font sizes
become too small when the screen resolution is too high, this is not
an argument against using pt, but rather for the use of pt. If the
complaint is that we are ignoring mobile users, this means we need to
educate people (including myself) that we need to make a separate
style sheet for mobile devices that does not declare sizes.

If you really ask me, I see it as illogical to drop or change the
definition of either pt or px. I don't know if this means anything to
anyone on this list, but this will be what I think.

-- 
cheers,
-ambrose

Received on Thursday, 7 January 2010 03:08:38 UTC