Re: Metric Typography Units

From: Francois Yergeau (yergeau@alis.com)
Date: Fri Jan 15 1999 - 11:34:21 EST


À 09:44 14/01/99 -0800, John Cowan a écrit :
><flame level='mild' type='chauvinism'>Hey, it was the U.S. who
>devised the point system (admittedly based on the inch) back when
>the rest of the world was still suffering from a variety of
>*named* font sizes. The whole idea of standardizing on
>*numerical* sizes in a fixed relationship to one another was
>what we "foisted on the world".

<extinguisher type="chauvinism">Quite wrong, I'm afraid. A point system
based on a geometric progression was devised by Truchet in the late 17th
century. It never took off, but later inspired the Fournier point and
especially the Didot point (both 18th century) which did enjoy very
widespread use, long before the Americam printer's point was defined. Some
details at http://www.irisa.fr/faqtypo/truchet/truchet.html>

-- 
François Yergeau



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:44 EDT