Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!ece-csc!mcnc!rti!sas!bts
From: bts@sas.UUCP (Brian T. Schellenberger)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Definition of Point
Message-ID: <642@sas.UUCP>
Date: 17 Oct 88 18:54:05 GMT
References: <2610015@hpsal2.HP.COM> <30767@bbn.COM> <217@dcs.UUCP>
Reply-To: bts@sas.UUCP (Brian T. Schellenberger)
Organization: SAS Institute Inc, Cary NC
Lines: 18

In article <217@dcs.UUCP> wnp@dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul) writes:
|In article <30767@bbn.COM> cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell) writes:
|   in a font, generally pointsize is considered to refer to the sum of x-height
|   (i.e. the height of the lower case x and by inference of most l.c. chars.),
|   descenders, and ascenders or (cap height - x height), whichever is larger.
|
|   I am making this comment, because I have come across several DTP books and
|   programs which measure point size just on the cap height, and that leads to
|   specs and type sizes which differ from the standard, leading to much 
|   confusion.

Does the height of a parenthesis work well as an approximation?  I ask
because this is one that is suggested by Knuth.
-- 
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