

A 12pt font should look useful everywhere - tspiteri
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/14802.html

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__alexs
A 12pt font should be 4.216867mm high everywhere. A 1em font should probably
be readable by someone with average eyesight everywhere and a 12px font may
require a magnifying glass to read but should still be legible when you use
one.

We have different scales and units for a reason, the stupid part is that
computers pretend to use physical units and then actually give you something
different. So either remove all references to physical units from your
graphics libraries or actually try and get it right. Don't arbitrarily
redefine units we've been using for hundreds of years because your API sucks.

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forrestthewoods
What? As a game developer what data type and value should I specify for font
rendering on an iphone, ipad, 32" 720p LCD, 42" 1080p LCD, 60" 1080p LCD, and
120" 1080p projector? Bonus points for solving a similar set but for printed
text ranging from index card to billboard size.

This is not a simple problem with a simple solution. If it were simple then
there wouldn't be multiple topics and giant discussions associated with each.

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DeepDuh
How about: Incident viewing angle a length can be perceived at average viewing
distance?

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__alexs
Even this is not sufficient information to re-flow the design as many users
prefer larger screen objects or may simply be unable to use your application
due to vision problems or other disabilities.

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DeepDuh
who says it shouldn't be zoomable?

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__alexs
Certainly but you need to consider how your UI responds to a more (or less)
constrained space as the zoom changes. It's hard to implement designs that
adapt to that with the tools we have right now.

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tulrin
Points are a unit of measurement that have no place in CS other than in
determining the size of text when it is printed. Don't use pts because they
make no sense for the medium.

Graphic designers as a group have yet to shed the "limitations" of their
education which is STILL grounded in the print world. It is why we still see
so many websites that are just strips down the middle of a large screen rather
than flowing to fit the screen.

Could you imagine if a similar design strategy was used for developing
applications? Every app would have a fixed window and none would go full
screen.

Maybe designers should stop doing mockups in a static format such as Photoshop
and start doing their mocks in a browser.

Seriously, if you can't figure out how to work with dynamic content do us all
a favor and go back to designing printed material.

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daniel_sim
My approach is to leave it to the device manufacturer/user and only use %
based font sizing. CSS wise, for layout I then rely on % for horizontal
spacing/positioning and em's for the verticals, which act as a kind of "em =
line" system. Even though an em is rarely a line is a baseline sense, it makes
cross-device design a lot more painless leaving the base unit to the device
itself.

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comex
Incidentally, using arc-seconds-per-pixel does not necessarily make a good
default - I want a smaller text size on my iPhone not just because I hold it
closer to my face, but also because there just isn't as much screen real
estate and I prefer to deal with somewhat smaller text to avoid scrolling.

