Metric typographic units have been devised and proposed several times to overcome the various traditional point systems. After the

French revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are conside ...

of 1789 one popular proponent of a switch to metric was Didot, who had been able to standardise the continental European typographic measurement a few decades earlier. The conversion did not happen, though. The

Didot point In typography, the point is the smallest unit of measure. It is used for measuring font size, leading, and other items on a printed page. The size of the point has varied throughout printing's history. Since the 18th century, the size of a poin ...

was metrically redefined as m (≈ 0.376 mm) in 1879 by Berthold. The advent and success of

desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online ...

(DTP) software and

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...

s for office use, coming mostly from the non-metric

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, basically revoked this metrication process in typography. DTP commonly uses the

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, ...

point, which is defined as of an inch (352.(7) μm).

Metric Didot Point

With the introduction of

phototypesetting Phototypesetting is a method of setting type. It uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper. It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing ( digital typesetting). T ...

in the 1970s metric units were increasingly used in typography. The Didot point was redefined once again to 375 μm exactly ( mm).

Quart

Also in the 1970s, the new unit quart (''quarter millimetre'', abbreviated 'q') of 250 μm ( mm) was devised. The German draft standard DIN 16507-2 has suggested that digital typography will be specified using millimeters, with sizes in multiples of 0.250 mm. In some special cases where finer resolution is required, it is permitted with sizes in multiples of 0.100 or 0.050 mm (respectively 2.5 and 5 times finer step sizes). German graphic designer and typographer

Otl Aicher Otto "Otl" Aicher (; 13 May 1922 – 1 September 1991) was a German graphic designer and typographer. Aicher co-founded and taught at the influential Ulm School of Design. He is known for having led the design team of the 1972 Summer Olympic ...

(1922 – 1991) vividly encouraged the use of the quart, and provided a suggested list of common sizes: Note that Aicher's

font size In typography, the point is the smallest unit of measure. It is used for measuring font size, leading, and other items on a printed page. The size of the point has varied throughout printing's history. Since the 18th century, the size of a point ...

s are based on the DIN standard then in development, which uses the

H-height In typography, cap height is the height of a capital letter above the baseline for a particular typeface.http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/glossary.html Glossary of (some) Typographic Terms It specifically is the height of capital letters that are ...

, whereas in lead typesetting the larger cap height was used. Some typographers have proposed using the

x-height upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the let ...

instead, because the psychological size depends more on the size of default, lowercase letters.

Device resolutions

The resolution of computer screens is often denoted in millimetres pitch, whereas office printers are usually denoted reciprocally in dots per inch ('dpi', 'd/in'). Phototypesetters have long used micrometres. To convert dpi resolution to μm resolution, the formula to be used is ', where ''R'' is the resolution in dpi. So for example 96 dpi translates to a resolution of 265 μm. The CSS3 media queries draft introduces the unit

dots per centimetre Dots per inch (DPI, or dpiThe acronym appears in sources as either "DPI" or lowercase "dpi". See "Print Resolution Understanding 4-bit depth – Xerox" (PDF). Xerox.com. September 2012.) is a measure of spatial printing, video or image scanner ...

(dpcm) for resolution.

References

External links

Metric typographic units
Typography {{typ-stub

Metric Didot Point

Quart

Device resolutions

See also

References

External links