Talk:Metric typographic units

Merge
There is an article Typographic unit, and I'm wondering if this one should be removed from here and copied to that one, into its "Metric units" section. --Shlomital 20:33, 2004 Oct 8 (UTC)

Device resolutions in metric
The conversion formula given is very complicated; it could be simplified to 25400/R. Is there any reason not to? Rwxrwxrwx 22:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

DIN Section All Wrong?
I believe the DIN section may be completely confused.

Which measurement is baseline-to-top-of-H?

Is there a measurement that is baseline-to-baseline -- or one that is top-of-H-to-baseline-above?

Which is which?

What is 72% of what?

In the examples shown like SG:4.3/HG:6.0, the SG is 72% of the HG -- seems to contradict all the explanations.

Is the translation to CSS measurements correct? In CSS, I believe the "line-height" measurement is baseline-to-baseline.

Is it specifically capital "H", or any "full-height letter" -- there can be variation between the heights of capital letters in a font, and some lowercase ascenders are often taller than capitals.

Is the translation of "Oberhöhe" as "font height" correct. Or does it mean "over-height" = "height above" = leading above? In other words, a top-of-H-to-baseline-above measurement??

I completely re-wrote the DIN section, "correcting" everything as I thought it should be (and making many improvements for readability) -- but now I'm too confused to commit it.

In the text below I have put links in SINGLE brackets so you can read the referral text, and made the section headlines "SECTION:" so they won't appear as sections in the Talk articles here. If you decide to copy it to the real article, be sure to make all the single brackets double -- and redo the bolding which will be lost when you copy the text.

MY REWORKING:

SECTION: DIN 16507-2==

[DIN], the German standards body, has devised a standard way of specifying font dimensions in metric units using two values: Schriftgröße or SG ("font size"), and Oberhöhe or OH ("font height").

Schriftgröße is defined as the height of the letter "H" in a particular font. Oberhöhe is defined as the height of the "H" plus [leading] above, from [Baseline (typography)|baseline] to baseline.

The standard defines a default "well-proportioned" leading ratio where the Schriftgröße is 72% (rounded to one decimal) of the Oberhöhe.

Font dimensions are specified as two numbers separated by a solidus (forward slash): SG/OH, both in millimetres.

For example, a text in about 12pt size and with default, one-line leading is defined as 4.3/6.0 according to the standard. The same size with extra leading, for one and a half lines of space, is defined as 4.3/9.0. Text in about 14pt size with default leading is 5.0/7.0.

The DIN standard can already be used today in Web design in [Cascading Style Sheets|CSS] rules, for example:



or



SECTION: Other proposals==

The DIN standard uses the [H-height], but some typographers have proposed using the [x-height] instead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.6.247.77 (talk • contribs) 08:51, November 14, 2006

Advisory: DIN Section Inaccurate?
I believe the DIN section may be completely confused.

In typography in general, and in CSS, the "font size" is an imaginary box that encloses the maximum size of any characters in the font -- we can think of it roughly as the descender-to-ascender height.

In general typography, "leading" or "interlinear space" is a measurement from the baseline-to-baseline of two lines. CSS "line-height" uses an approach which is effectively the same (for multiple lines), but is calculated and applied differently. The amount of the "font-size" is subtracted from the amount of the "line-height", and the remaining amount of "line-height" is divided in two, and placed above and below the imaginary box of the "font-size". That is, roughly, half the difference goes below the descenders and half goes above the ascenders.

CSS Example

A "font-size" of 12px means the distance from (roughly) the bottom of a "j" to the top of an "h" is 12 pixels.

A "line-height" of 14px accompanying this font size means: 14px minus 12px equals 2 pixels, divided in half equals 1 pixel -- so 1 pixel of empty space goes above the top of the "h", and 1 pixel of empty space goes below the bottom of the "j".

So in the current article, if the CSS examples are correct then the description of the DIN system is all wrong. The DIN system as described has one of the measurements being the height of the letter "H" -- but CSS does not use this measurement for either "font-size" or "line-height".

Altenately, if the description of the DIN system is correct, then you cannot currently specify fonts in CSS with the DIN system. The DIN specification of "SG/OH" is not the same as the CSS notation "font: 4.3mm/6.0mm" or "font-size: 8.6mm; line-height: 12.0mm".

Also note that the current DIN description seems to be confused even within itself -- it seems to have "font size (Schriftgröße)" and "font height (Oberhöhe)" reversed.

I will see if I can find the actual DIN specification. In the meantime I'm putting a warning note in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.6.229.42 (talk • contribs) 11:36, November 14, 2006

Inaccurate webpage
The content of the article -- and even the article title -- seem to come directly from this Web page which is definitely not accurate in at least some respects:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/metric-typo/

And the Wikipedia article text seems to mangle the info further, giving "SG/OH" as the specification format, when the source Web page seems to give "SG(as designed)/SG(as desired)".

Additionally, this whole subject is confounding two separate issues: specifying existing digital fonts in millimeters (a trivial thing, which contrary to the article, is possible in most current word processors/page layout apps and in CSS) -- and regularizing the actual size of font characters with their supposed sizes (which is not specifically a metric issue, could be done with point sizing as well).

So as far as simple specification of existing fonts in millimeters, it's really a non-subject -- you can do it if you wish to. And I'm thinking proposals for regularization of actual font character sizes should be a different article, on that subject.

I don't have more time to spend on this -- I'm adding another warning at the top of the page that the whole article (except for the Device resolutions in metric section is not accurate and should be deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.7.22.151 (talk • contribs) 15:07, November 14, 2006

Disputed tag
Hiya, I'm not particularly invested in this topic, but just stopping in as a wandering admin. I see that the article has been re-tagged as disputed, though the date is being listed as November 2006, although the tag was added in March 2008. May I ask the reason for this? --Elonka 23:16, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I also wandered in on this (from the disputed articles category), and am failing to see what specifically the dispute is. One editor is claiming that the information provided is not accurate, and that the source is not reliable, however provides no sources to back up his/her claims.  The source that he/she does not like is the University of Cambridge, which to my mind is a Reliable Source.  I am going to be Bold and remove the disputed tag and the warning at the top of the article based on the fact that there are no sources provided that contradict the article. PGWG (talk) 14:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with the removal. If someone feels that the information is inaccurate, and they'd like to provide a source that is more accurate, they are welcome to do so.  But just tagging as "inaccurate" and then walking away, isn't helpful. (Correction) I did notice that there were some other anon comments that had been offered on the talkpage, which had been deleted in between revisions.  Since the main concerns appeared to be about the DIN section, I went ahead and deleted that section from the article. --Elonka 16:07, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Aicher's font sizes
The section on the quart says that "Aicher's font sizes are based on the DIN standard then in development, which uses the H-height, whereas in lead typesetting the larger cap height was used," however the link from "H-height" goes to the Wikipedia page for cap height, which implies that the two terms are synonymous, both meaning the hight from the baseline to the top of the capital H (or any other flat-topped capital letter).

Is it possible that one of these is supposed to be ascender height (baseline to highest ascender) or body height (lowest descender to highest ascender)?

Avram (talk) 20:25, 12 November 2021 (UTC)