15 Feb
2010
15 Feb
'10
1:26 p.m.
Shoppa, Tim ????????:
Knuth's Metafont book closely brought together for me, for the first time, computers
and typography, and they've been closely linked for me ever since. I could've
sword
that I read that a point = 1/72 inch in there but despite some desparate scouring
he uses "point" as base unit with absolutely no attempt to map it into inches.
The 1967 World Book Encyclopedia defines one point as 1/72 of an inch.
It seems to be the most common measure used by printers. It seems that
1/144 of an inch is the smallest unit of measure used in the printing
trade. There is a name given to that measure -- 1/144 of an inch --
which I do not recall at the moment. Related is the pica, which is
another printer's measure. These are all fractions of whichever
standard inch is traditionally used by printers, which has not changed
in the trade despite sporadic legal redefinitions. There should be
something more under the subjects of printing and typesetting if
anyone wants to look in a decent public or academic library which
doesn't throw out it's books. I suppose a google search for "printing
AND typesetting AND pica" might return some useful results as well.
Just in case that helps.
(I used to have a see-through printer's rule which was laid out in
points, pica, et cetera. It was quite useful for for laying out
pages. This was long before computers started to be used for layouts.)
==
jd
Captain Penny's Law:
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
--