On 2007/09/05 14:40 (GMT-0700) Hassan Schroeder apparently typed: > Felix Miata wrote:
>> If you accept the assumption I make below, then quite the contrary. > I'm not interested in accepting your "assumptions" -- I'm looking > for valid evidence; that's the whole point. There are only two possible presumptions regarding the indicated pt sizes that can be made from their study. Either the pt sizes specified were meant literally, in which case the data and results remain perfectly valid today, or they were meant nominally. If they were meant nominally, because the actual average DPI of that time was inaccurately set to in excess of reality, the results indicate people preferred fonts that were in fact larger than the pt sizes that were indicated in the study's results. IOW, with the arguably easier to make assumption, those test subjects actually preferred larger than 12pt. >> A 1280x1024 19" display is ~86.3 DPI. If you are using a browser that floors >> at or is fixed to use an assumed 96 DPI (standard doz setting BTW), which >> more often than not is the reality, then 12pt should be rendering at >> about 17.8px. I wasn't clear, and I got the math backwards. With the default floor in effect, nominal 12pt will render at 16px, as it always will when a browser is functioning as if display DPI was in fact 96. However, 12pt is merely nominal when actual display DPI is less than the 96 DPI that Firefox assumes, not an accurate 12pt as when 12pt is printed. 86/96 times 16 is 14.333, which rounded by FF will render at 14px when both 12pt is called for and it is permitted to use the actual display DPI of 86. > Using FF2 on my SuSE 10 desktop, 12pt and 16px Arial upper case "M" > characters render at *exactly* the same height. Measured, not just > theorized. Indeed. You are running a sub-96 DPI display. Without changing the hidden Firefox pref layout.css.dpi from -1 to 0, and assuming a reasonably but not necessarily accurately configured X, Firefox on your system assumes 96 DPI, which makes 12pt nominal exactly equal to 16px, which makes the actual size of nominal 12pt larger than 1/6", the actual height of a printed 12pt character box. If you visit with Firefox http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/auth/Font/font-arial with 1280x1024 on 19" you'll see a match between 12pt and 16px. However, if you permit Firefox to use an accurate DPI for your display by setting layout.css.dpi to 86 (or possibly by setting it to 0, depending on your X configuration), then you'd see something like http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/Fnt/font-arial-L086DPI.gif (12pt smaller than 16px; ~14px; SUSE 10.2). If your SUSE was running on a 16" 1680x1050 laptop, and X was configured to use an accurate DPI, then you'd see something like http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/SS/Fnt/font-arial-L124DPI.gif (12pt much larger than 16px; ~20px; SUSE 10.2). >>> But we don't have any of that for the "studies" you cite, so how much >>> can they really be relied on? >> Because of their source and apparent nature, it is reasonable to assume > No it's not. It's only "reasonable to assume" if you want to try to > twist the evidence to your way of thinking. > One minute you say you need a whole laundry list of data points to > analyze how "big" a particular font "size" is, and the next minute > you say we can "assume" that a particular study (the conclusion of > which favors your argument) is perfectly valid without all that. The laundry list was about conveying apparent physical size in a discussion about size. A pixel has no physical size meaning without a context that can translate it into a physical size. At the very least, doing that requires knowledge of both screen size and resolution, or the combination of the two that is normally presented as DPI. If we make the easy presumption that the "scientific" study was flawed by presenting nominal pt rather than real pt, then the results it presents understates the participants' size preference. If we make the perfectly plausible other presumption, that pt means real pt, then there's nothing yet shown in this thread to invalidate the study results. -- "It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape." Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
