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From: dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: The pointsize of type in "hotmetal" days (long)
Keywords: typography
Message-ID: <7676@boring.cwi.nl>
Date: 22 Oct 88 20:23:26 GMT
References: <2610015@hpsal2.HP.COM> <30767@bbn.COM> <217@dcs.UUCP> <642@sas.UUCP> <224@dcs.UUCP> <1988Oct21.134156.18568@sq.uucp>
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 29

In an excellent article <1988Oct21.134156.18568@sq.uucp> dns@sq.com (David Slocombe) writes:
 > We would say, "Set this 8 on 9 in 11 picas nut and nut."
 > 
 > That meant:  typeset it with 8-point type on a 9-point slug that was
 > 11 picas long but with an en-space at the beginning and the end of
 > the line.
 > 
 > In troff terms, that's:
 > 
 > 	.ps 8
 > 	.vs 9
 > 	.ll 11P-1n
 > 	.in 1n
 > 
That's right, the slug is always larger than the type itself.  However,
the difference between slug size and type size depends on the kind of
script used.  For latin, greek and cyrillic alphabets it is in general
about 10-20 % (8 on 9, 10 on 12 etc.).  For other scripts it is different,
for hebrew we have: 8 on 14, 10 on 16, or even 10 on 18.  For arabic it is
again similar to latin.  My question is now, if different scripts have to be
combined, what must match?  I think it is the slug size, and not the script
size, so when I have to put an hebrew word in a piece of times latin set in
12 on 14, for the hewrew part I would use 8 on 14.  However, arabic is still
more difficult, as arabic 18 on 20 has about the same clarity as latin
12 on 14.  So how to combine?
-- 
dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland
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