- From: Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:19:49 -0700
- To: Alan Stearns <stearns@adobe.com>
- Cc: "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com>, www-style list <www-style@w3.org>
On Oct 26, 2011, at 10:13 AM, Alan Stearns wrote: > On 10/26/11 10:03 AM, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Alan Stearns <stearns@adobe.com> wrote: >>> Even in Roman text, cap height is not any of these things: >>> >>> size of the text >>> as tall as possible >>> height of the text >>> height of the line >> >> Is it approximately that, or is it far off? Would any of the >> use-cases *not work* with a cap-height unit? >> >> ~TJ > > It all depends on the font. In some fonts ascent will be significantly > taller than cap height, so a lowercase 'f' will loom above a capital "A." > What "size of the text" means is a little fuzzy - is it cap height, ascent, > the max of those, or an optic average? > > The discussion so far seems to be around wanting to size things based on cap > height, which is perfectly fine. Another possible use case could be wanting > to size things based on ascent, which would require a different unit than > "cap height." I just want to be precise about what the current proposal will > be providing. I think cap height is the more useful measure. Just as x-height is useful for racking in something that is generally the height of a lower case letter (even though ascenders and descenders go beyond that height), cap height is useful for racking in something that is generally the height of a upper case letter (even though ascenders and descenders go beyond that height).
Received on Wednesday, 26 October 2011 17:20:23 UTC