>Gregory Pittman wrote: > >>I would think that points came about as part of an effort to have a >>unit small enough to measure useful font sizes in whole numbers. > >It's always good to be able to respond to your own emails with >better information. See >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_unit -- some tidbits follow. > >Well, Louis Desjardins will be interested to learn that the whole >concept and execution of points in typography is quite French -- >Fran?ois-Ambroise Didot came up with this in about 1783 as a >modification of an idea by Pierre Simon Fournier. Didot's >modification based the measurement on the standard French Royal >inch, or pouce (Fournier was a little less precise). > >The American Point System came about in 1886, but was based on the >original idea of Fournier -- 1/6 of an inch (American) is a pica, >1/12 of a pica is a point. Or at least conceptually. Then, as now, >Big Business will have its say, and some influential type foundries >had their own ideas and therefore it was decided that 83 picas = 35 >mm (how do you like the math of that?).
Delightful. The part I like most, I think, is: "it was decided"... Louis > >Greg >_______________________________________________ >Scribus mailing list >Scribus at nashi.altmuehlnet.de >http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/mailman/listinfo/scribus
