Re: [css-writing-modes] Rename extent/measure to block-size/inline-size?

On 2014-02-28 10:58 (GMT) Simon Sapin composed:

> I know it’s not Last Call yet :) But what do you think of renaming
> "extent" a.k.a. "logical height" to "block size", and "measure" a.k.a.
> "logical width" to "inline size"?

Nay!

> I may be getting English wrong, but to me "extent" and "measure" are
> both synonymous to "size".

Size of an object displayed on a two dimensional surface is a function of two 
lengths (or extents, or measures).

Size is poorly used in CSS as applied to text. 10px is a measure of a single 
length. Objects measuring only a single length are invisible abstractions. 
Text has both height and width, so a "10px" glyph is really something on the 
order of 50px in *size*, a function of a 10px measure vertically and ~5px 
measure horizontally, and thus ostensibly visible. Doubling text height from 
10px to 20px actually quadruples its *size*. A reduction of text size from 
16px to 10px, a CSS size reduction of 37.5%, is a *physical* size reduction 
of ~61%. IOW, 10px text is 39% of the *size* of 16px text. Thus, neither 
extent nor measure are good synonyms for size.

>  The terms by themselves don’t tell me which
> is which. I understand (after reading it in the spec) that "measure" is
> more specific in typography, but I don’t know how much of the "target
> audience" is familiar with that. I wasn’t.

Measure and extent as used imply single measurement results, single lengths, 
not areas (sizes) resulting from measurement of two lengths.
-- 
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Received on Friday, 28 February 2014 16:10:02 UTC