6 ms·
Points are a weird and inconsistent unit of measure
- dsevil 5mo agoJust posted the following poorly-fleshed-out comment there: So disappointed that this document, as much as it obsesses over obscure physical quantities no one cares about, makes no mention of THE FUCK. 1 fuck is equal to the amount of concern you have about something below which you cannot achieve without having no concern at all, as which giving "zero fucks" is defined. "Absolute zero fucks" would be the formal terminology. For preliminary purposes, we can assume 1 fuck = 1 shit = 1 damn, but must account for the possible existence of a big-point-vs-printers-point style situation. Also they could be drastically different, like if 1 shit given about global warming would be equivalent to 299_792_458 fucks or something like that. I have very little knowledge about the *real* machinations behind the standardization of measures (a tinfoil conspiracy kook would call it an Agenda 21, or 21 Agendas One, but I'm not going there), I want this to be discussed.
- abanana 5mo ago[dead]
- WillAdams 5mo agoTLDR; folks should just use PostScript (Big) Points. The mention of https://frinklang.org/ https://frinklang.org/ is kind of interesting --- hadn't heard of it before --- may need to revisit the "ProportionBar" tool which I made ages ago....
- JoshTriplett 5mo ago> TLDR; folks should just use PostScript (Big) Points. The distinction ends up being important if you need compatibility with some document format, or with common typesetting expectations. But if there weren't a concern of surprising people with certain expectations of font-picking widgets, I'd argue that the better choice would be millimeters. 4mm is a great default font size, and going up by one integer mm at a time is a reasonable step size (it's just under 3pt).
- WillAdams 5mo agoIn Japan, a common measurement of font size is _kyu_ (q) one-fourth of a millimeter (0.25mm).
- zetanor 5mo agoThat's why my favorite unit is the px, a.k.a., 1 centiinch.
- JimDabell 5mo agoCSS pixels are weirder: http://inamidst.com/stuff/notes/csspx http://inamidst.com/stuff/notes/csspx
- fluidcruft 5mo agoI thought px was an abbreviation of pixel which doesn't have a dimension?
- Tagbert 5mo agoPixels have pitch, which is the distance between pixels. That is what is usually meant when talking about px as a measurement. It is analogous to dpi or ppi or the metric version.
- ethmarks 5mo agoDoes the pitch describe the distance between the edges of the pixels or between the centers?
- Tagbert 5mo agocenter to center.
- aptly_yclept 5mo agoTo expand on what the previous said, here's a link to a seminal paper on pixels - "A pixel is not a little square" by Alvy Ray Smith. https://alvyray.com/Memos/CG/Microsoft/6_pixel.pdf https://alvyray.com/Memos/CG/Microsoft/6_pixel.pdf
- PopAlongKid 5mo agoFrom the title I thought this was going to be about basis points, as used in finance. (A basis point is one hundredth of 1 percentage point).
- RexM 5mo agoI thought it was going to be about story points.
- sevenseacat 5mo agoI thought it was going to be about story points and I was going to wholeheartedly agree with the premise
- NooneAtAll3 5mo agowhat do story points measure?
- clickety_clack 5mo agoIt’s an imperial measure of the number of sentences in a story. The metric version is the “Gilgamesh”, a reference to a prototype story maintained by ISO in Paris.
- virgil_disgr4ce 5mo ago* gigamesh
- Shish2k 5mo agoExcept if you're posting stories online, in which case it's most likely a gibimesh, though people use the terms interchangeably
- syncsynchalt 5mo agoNothing, except a story's size relative to other stories estimated by the same team.
- endofreach 5mo agoI don't know what happened in my brain but i expected a piece about points as in keeping scores. Maybe about how we evolved from binary results (alive/dead in early human competitions) to more complex systems. I'd say humans played games long before being able to count. Of course competition is inherent to human nature. But i'd say, without getting into any philosophical debate, a certain amount of compassion and empathy is as well. Which must have resulted in early ideas of fairness. Especially when respect and status seem to be crucial to society. So, how and when did points come into play? ... Well, ok. I stop procrastinating for now (i hope). I hate my brain.
- butvacuum 5mo agoNot sure, but typefacing/fonts is absolutely cursed with this stuff. I'd be shocked if there isn't a true type font that runs DOOM. There's a reason Microsoft pushed font rendering out of the kernel in Vista. (Technically, they started the work on it)
- cheschire 5mo agoEMUs always seemed weirder to me. Like an unnecessary compromise instead of just using metric outright. https://startbigthinksmall.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/points-inches-and-emus-measuring-units-in-office-open-xml/ https://startbigthinksmall.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/points-i...
- snoopen 5mo agoOh they're a super weird unit for sure. But I do kinda like that it allows expressing both 100ths of an inch and 10ths of a millimetre as an integer. I wonder if they're a carryover from early versions of MS Word when CPU power was more limited?
- tariky 5mo agoAs someone from european continent. Those US measurements units look and feel so hard to work with. Instead metric system is predictable and easy to work with. Real question is why US just don't move to metric system?
- reddalo 5mo ago> why US just don't move to metric system? They've been trying for a long time, but apparently it's not an easy task. You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- georgemcbay 5mo ago> Real question is why US just don't move to metric system? Because we live in a land of liberty! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk
- cityofdelusion 5mo agoThe U.S. uses metric pretty much everywhere that is important, in most science, engineering, and medicine. Specific trades and common household things remain imperial due to inertia and no one really caring. It is much more accurate to say the U.S. has a dual system. We learn metric in school like everyone else.
- Jblx2 5mo agoCan't wait for us to adopt the metric Avogadro constant. I wonder what units they use for the Hubble constant in Europe (love me some megaparsecs).
- LtWorf 5mo ago> Real question is why US just don't move to metric system? The maga people are ready to die on this hill.
- agus4nas 5mo agotaht`s perfect 4 europeans
- masfuerte 5mo agoFWIW, early 1980s Epson dot-matrix printers vertically spaced the dots in the print head exactly 1/72" apart, though I don't remember them calling the distance a point.
- yhdf 5mo ago[dead]
- efitz 5mo agoWell that there is your problem, LaTeX is using imperial points, and Inkscape is using metric points. You need to start using SI points that are defined using wavelengths of ground state emissions of a decaying Americium atom.
- djoldman 5mo agoNot to support or attack the rationale behind the css or html standards but these have exact real world SI unit meanings: CSS | | Exact Size | Exact Size Unit | Name | (Inches) | (Millimeters) -------------------------------------------------------- cm | Centimeter | 50/127 | 10 mm | Millimeter | 5/127 | 1 Q | Quarter-millimeter | 5/508 | 1/4 in | Inch | 1 | 127/5 pc | Pica | 1/6 | 127/30 pt | Point | 1/72 | 127/360 px | Pixel | 1/96 | 127/480 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millimetre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millimetre https://www.w3.org/TR/css-values-3/#absolute-lengths https://www.w3.org/TR/css-values-3/#absolute-lengths
- dylan604 5mo agoNever heard of the Quarter-millimeter before. Strange mix of divisions by tens suddenly switching to divisions of twos
- WillAdams 5mo agoIt's known as the _kyu_ in Japan and used for specifying type (font) sizes.
- stevesimmons 5mo agoI'd never heard of it either. A comment further down suggests it is Japanese. Digging deeper, the kyu -- or Q for quarter millimeter -- is apparently a foundational distance measurement in Japanese typesetting, which is metric and operates on a millimeter grid.
- twic 5mo agoThe article mentions: > the German and Japanese point is 0.250 mm It's probably the sanest adaptation of the point to the metric system. A traditional point is close to a third of a millimetre, but that's too weird. Since the Q is close to 3/4 of a traditional point, it's also quite easy to convert from traditional multiple-of-three point sizes: 9 pt -> 12 Q, 12 pt -> 16 Q, etc. Although it's even easier just to call those 3 mm and 4 mm!
- My_Name 5mo agoHere was me thinking it was about getting points on HN
- ivolimmen 5mo agoThis is why Microsoft access had twips