"Points" are meaningless.

[dumpling]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Why does software have me select font size in "points"?

How (other than trial and error) am I to select proper "point" size in order to get the characters to be a certain height and/or width? Seriously.

I recently designed some calendars in CorelDRAW and the only way I could know the size of characters I had selected was to measure them with the on-screen ruler.

Same thing with the position of the characters. Even if I only want a single line of text, there is still obligatory whitespace above and below, which I have to measure and compensate for. I deal with text boxes overlapping, even when the text itself does not even come close to overlapping; it is the fault of this obligatory whitespace.

Are there standard ways of dealing with these issues?

[PublishingMojo]

I'm not familiar with CorelDraw, but in Adobe Creative Suite, there are tools to adjust the spacing between lines so you can set consecutive lines as close as you want within the same text box.

It's true that points and picas are artifacts of extinct technology, like furlongs and fortnights. And it's counterintuitive that the 36-point sizes of different faces have widely different cap heights and x-heights. But once you get the hang of it, you can easily tweak the size of a font to the desired cap height or x-height. I usually do it visually rather than with the ruler, or set guides to check alignment.

Like the QWERTY keyboard, the point system survives mainly because that's what the majority of users are familiar with. Anyone attempting to get users to switch to a new system would have to overcome a huge amount of inertia.

Here in the US, where we're more afraid of the metric system than we are of psychos with machine guns, the printer's point serves another useful purpose: At 1/72 of an inch (0.35 mm), it's about the smallest increment that can be seen with the naked eye.

[hrant]

Letters don't fit in straightjackets - what can you do?

[1/72 is] about the smallest increment that can be seen with the naked eye.

Shirly you can't be serious.

hhp

[oldnick]

Are there standard ways of dealing with these issues?

Yes: they are called Patience and Discipline. Study them well, Grasshopper…

[Luma Vine]

Are there any units of measurement that are not meaningless (in the way you are defining it)? Feet for example seems quite silly since we all have different sized feet. Meters is even less tied to a perceivable phenomenon. And throw in variations of pixel size on screens and you have no practical way of specifying size even if you had meaningful units.

[JamesM]

> How (other than trial and error) am I to select proper "point" size
> in order to get the characters to be a certain height and/or width?

Trial and error is part of the design process. You set type, judge how it looks, and make adjustments until its right.

But if you need a line of type to be an exact width, just make the text box that width (or draw a line or a box onscreen that is that width) and then adjust the type size until it matches that width. No need for a ruler; every drawing program will display the width of objects.

If you want type to be an exact height — for example if you need your caps to be exactly 1" tall for some reason — you can use a similar method of matching the height to a line or box of that height, or you can draw guidelines that are that far apart.

Tip: With many applications you can adjust type size up or down quickly with your arrow keys. Just select the type and then press the arrow. Can be very handy when trying to match a width. See your application's instructions for details.

[John Hudson]

Quit dumping on the dumpling, his question is entirely legitimate given what he wants to be able to do, and digital technology should enable what people want to do, not force them to operate by trial and error in an arcane system of type sizing inherited from long-obsolete technologies involving little pieces of metal.

Dumpling, there are a couple of different aspects to the issues you are facing. First, let me explain why point sizing of type is meaningless for your purposes. What is scaled when type is specified by point size is the 'body' of the type, which corresponds to the height of the face of the piece of metal in foundry type. Of course, in digital type, this body is invisible, even to the person setting the type. What you have noted is that the visual size of individual typefaces relative to the body height varies. There are sometimes good technical reasons for this, which is why this somewhat arcane scaling system remains useful. For instance, if a type involves more than one writing system with different use of vertical space, or if it includes some particularly tall characters, it may make sense to 'cast the type small on the body' -- to use the old foundry terminology. Another reason why digital type might be visibly smaller than the nominal type size is inherited scaling, i.e. it was cast small in the original metal versions of the design, and subsequent technologies have inherited this scaling (see, for instance, Monotype Perpetua).

Now, what you need for your purposes is a way to scale type relative to visual features rather than invisible body. And there's no good reason why software shouldn't be able to provide you with this functionality. After all, the information you need is present in the font, either in explicit form (e.g. declared cap height or x-height) or in a manner derivable from character identity and outline. I'm guessing that there is some software out there that provides such an option, but I don't know which. The first thing you should do is dig around in Corel's preferences to see if there is some kind of option to scale type by e.g. cap height.

The linespacing issue you mention is related, but a bit different as it is particular to digital type. Fonts have sets of vertical metrics data that software uses to determine default linespacing when software is not using explicit leading values set by the user. Since these vertical metrics data are font-specific, different types will have different default linespacing at the same nominal size. Again, there are good technical reasons for this. The good news is that almost all software -- even MS Word! -- provides means for the user to specify linespacing as an absolute value (usually in point size) for selected text. So you should be able to easily resolve this aspect of your problem.

[aluminum]

Keep in mind that type sizes (be it points or otherwise) are not stating the size of the glyph itself, but rather the glyph's bounding box, so it's never a direct correlation.

[JamesM]

> And there's no good reason why software shouldn't
> be able to provide you with this functionality

I think newer versions of InDesign can set a word or phrase to a given width (although I've never used that feature), and perhaps other page layout or drawing programs do too.

But while people commonly need to set a *column* to a certain width, setting a particular word or phrase to an exact height or width — such as "I need this word to be exactly 2.73" wide" — is not something that most people need to do every day, and when needed it can be accomplished fairly easily by making a text box that wide and adjusting point size until the width matches. I'm not sure it's a feature that many users are asking for.

And actually I think the point system, while old, works pretty well once you learn it. Subdividing an inch in 72 tiny increments is useful because the difference between, say, 7' and 8' type is indeed very tiny. And applications have been displaying type size in points for as long as I can remember. I know it can be confusing to newcomers, but what alternatives are there for accurately displaying type size?

[russellm]

In CorelDraw you can set how you specify text size by going to Tools >options (Control-J) >text. In the dialog box you can then set the default units to inches, millimeters, picas, points, ciceros, didots, or Q. I don’t know what Q is but 24 points is but 24 points is 33.867 Q.

Character formatting tools are at Text > Character formatting and Text > Paragraph formatting. Adjustments to leading and paragraph spacing, are measured by percent of character height, points or percent of point size. Adjustments to tracking (character spacing in Corel) and word spacing are by percent.

[hrant]

Actually Q is the system that makes the most sense. It's used in Japan, and the base unit is 1/4 of a millimeter.

As for what can practically be done, it's not actually hopeless - here's an idea: every font should have two additional numbers embedded: the ratio of cap height to EM, and the ratio of x-height to Em; this would allow a quick automatic scaling when the user chooses to set the size based on one of those two measures (which however would need to be supported in the software of course). Alternatively, good layout software could actually have the ability to automatically figure out what those numbers are by looking at the font, more than 99% of the time.

hhp

[dumpling]

If there is only one line of text, then leading is a meaningless concept.

I have done some shopping online for rubber stamps, specifically date stamps. Character size is expressed in the same units of measure you use for tasks unrelated to typography.

I have designed calendars. I have posted one of them on the "Typography / composition" board, under the title "Page-per-week calendar design".
* For the month numbers at the top of the page, as well as the week numbers at the bottom of the page, I wanted the characters to be of such a size as to just barely fit within certain margins. Only by trial and error could I do this.
* At least in the cells for Monday through Friday, I wanted the date numerals to be centered vertically. Again, trial and error.
* I wanted the numerals at the bottom to be a certain exact distance from the edge of the page. Same deal.

The way I see it is, anything that isn't ink should not be included in the measurement.

[aluminum]

@dumpling, but then what would you measure? Which character would you use? Which accent marks?

[dumpling]

I know it can be confusing to newcomers, but what alternatives are there for accurately displaying type size?

What's wrong with millimeters, or tenths of millimeters?
Even we Americans divide our inch into thousandths for precise work.

[John Hudson]

And actually I think the point system, while old, works pretty well once you learn it. Subdividing an inch in 72 tiny increments is useful because the difference between, say, 7' and 8' type is indeed very tiny. And applications have been displaying type size in points for as long as I can remember. I know it can be confusing to newcomers, but what alternatives are there for accurately displaying type size?

The issue raised by 'Dumpling' is not the unit system or how it relates to other unit systems such as inches, but what it relates to in the typeface, i.e. what is being measured/scaled. The fact that the body (em) that the nominal point size relates to is invisible and has no fixed relationship to any of the visible features of a typeface design means that you can't actually rely on it to specify the size of any visible feature. That makes it non-useful for all sorts of purposes. Further, as as typography becomes more and more internationalised, the limitations of such a system become more and more evident. It is one thing for two Latin types to be slightly different visual size at the same nominal size, but another for e.g. the Latin component of an Arabic font to need to be set at 22pt to be of equivalent size to a typical 12pt Latin font. This messes with user expectations of 'normal text size', not to mention the recurring issue of legal requirements for accessibility specified in point size.

Hrant, the information required to comparatively scale types by cap height or x-height already exists in fonts, so adding explicit information expressed as a ratio seems redundant. Software that would need to be updated to make use of such information could just as easily be updated to use the existing data. But the problem with both approaches is that it is terribly Latin-centric (or Euro-centric if you prefer, since the same concepts apply to Greek, Cyrillic and Armenian, although not always compatibly).

What I have in mind is a more radical but global solution, one that could result in all fonts being relatively scaleable to harmonise optically. This would require two things: a standard reference font in which the relationship of outlines to em height would constitute the value 1 of a Standard Visual Size; and a single new piece of information in fonts that would indicate the designer's proposed scaling of that font relative to the standard reference font, e.g. 0.87, 1.14 etc.. This isn't intended, of course, to replace existing scaling methods, but to enable a new way of visually harmonising types of varying on-the-body size independent of writing system.

[hrant]

Robert, it's actually not trial and error. You just have to measure once, and then scale.

the information required to comparatively scale types by cap height or x-height already exists in fonts

Oh, duh. Reinventing the wheel, sorry.
So yes, software would simply have to provide a way to scale to those values.

What I have in mind is ....

So you're saying have an apparent-size quotient? Although of course there's more to matching up multi-script fonts than that. And who would determine that? Eyes vary.

BTW if memory serves this is actually exactly a problem Jorge de Buen has been working on.

hhp

[John Hudson]

And who would determine that?

The type designer. The whole point is, as you say, that eyes -- and preferences -- vary, so there is never going to be a single, optimal solution. What I am suggesting is a means of establishing a base reference to overcome the most obvious problems of the current system; I fully expect that typographers would want to refine the results according to their own eyes and tastes, but the point is that they already have plenty of means by which to do that. What is lacking is a means to automate harmonious visual scaling according to the Pretty Darn Good criterion. I think the best way to do that is to put it in the hands of the same people on whom we rely to make all sorts of other judicial decisions about aspects of how fonts work: the type designers. What they need, though, is a standard reference against which to make those judicial decisions.

[altsan]

Why does software have me select font size in "points"?

How (other than trial and error) am I to select proper "point" size in order to get the characters to be a certain height and/or width? Seriously.

As noted, you're really asking two separate questions here. The point size doesn't directly correlate to the visible size of the characters. What it measures is the height of the em-square, the (imaginary) type body. Whether you measured it in points, millimetres or pixels, you would have the same problem (viz requiring trial and error).

The great strength of measuring by point size (or em height) is that it doesn't change when the typeface does. This is useful when you may potentially be combining different fonts within a single line at a fixed point size. If you measure line height by a calculation based on the font glyphs themselves, things may not line up properly. Whereas with a em-based line height, any number of 12-point fonts on a single line of type should all occupy the same vertical space.

The actual units are points because, I suppose, that's what people are used to. Since both screen and printer resolutions are normally measured in dots per inch, it's actually a more straightforward conversion than many other units would provide.

On-screen, for instance: At 72dpi 1 point == 1 pixel. At 96dpi, 1 point == 1.33333 pixels. Et cetera.

[Theunis de Jong]

In CorelDraw, can you measure in"pixels"? If so, at what zoom size is one pixel equal to one pixel? ("At 100%" is not a good answer, unless CorelDraw takes your screen resolution in account. And if it does, then it's still not an absolute measurement because your 100-pixel tall text would be larger or smaller than my 100-pixel tall text. Including the pixel in a list of "real world measurement units" is not simply an error, it's stupid. (And Thank You Adobe for doing so!)

The actual units are points because, I suppose, that's what people are used to.

Unless those people are not used to real world typography. It's no more "weird" than a map that displays distances between cities in kilometers, rather then in inches or millimeters. It's the "natural" way to express text size because it has been like that for several centuries.
In InDesign you can enter font height in millimeters as well (and even in centimeters or in inches), but the system converts them to "points" on entry.

But ... as several others point out above, there is no such thing as "the" font height. That is a notion that's usually even more bewildering for amateurs than the concept of "points".

[quadibloc]

Mostly, people are more concerned about how many lines fill the inch, rather than how big the letters are, which is why you can't select x-height or cap height from the size menu. It's an interesting feature to add, and presumably today's font formats do make the needed information available.

[PublishingMojo]

@ Hrant

[1/72 is] about the smallest increment that can be seen with the naked eye.
Shirly you can't be serious.

I am serious. The printer's point in very precise without being needlessly precise. And don't call me Shirley.

[dumpling]

So, let's see if I got this right: Font size, as expressed in points, is strictly a measure of how far down the page your cursor goes when you hit the return key. It has nothing to do with the size of the characters on the page, or indeed anything about the characters themselves, nor how they interact within a single line; all it is is seventy-two times the number of inches the cursor goes down the page when you press return. What this has to do with the font itself is beyond me.

[dumpling]

See this? This is what I made, and I would love to automate creation of these using software called FPDF. And the font-sizing system I am forced to work with has all the splendid logic of women's clothing sizes.

[russellm]

who said Corel measures in pixels, Theunis ?

The fastest sure way in Corel or Illustrator to get type to be exactly the visible cap height you want is to set guidelines to the height you want and then manually fit your text to then. Take a note of the nominal height to set any subsequent text to that height. Or, convert the text to curves (outlines) and adjust the size.

The unit of measurement you choose makes no difference. It's just different numbers for the same thing.

[quadibloc]

@dumpling:
Font size, as expressed in points, is strictly a measure of how far down the page your cursor goes when you hit the return key.

Yes!

What this has to do with the font itself is beyond me.

Well, it describes how tall each of the little pieces of lead-antimony alloy in the font are (or how long, since they're all 0.918" tall)... oh, wait, you're talking about those newfangled TrueType fonts!