fisher@sc2a.unige.ch (06/16/91)
In article <s64421.676905091@zeus>, s64421@zeus.usq.EDU.AU (house ron) writes: > Fact: MS Word thinks points are a horizontal measurement. I don't know > how to prove this in a few sentences, as I had to read the whole manual > to deduce it. You seem confused. There is no need to read the whole manual for that :-) I checked the definition in the glossaries of the manuals for WP 5.1, Word 5.0, and an HP LajerJet 500, which all agree. The last states: POINT SIZE A point is a unit of measurement that equals 1/72 inch. The height of characters is measured in points. I think you confuse vertical and horizontal size because - to paraphrase the Word Reference Manual (our's is in french), under "Font size" - : On most printers, the point size reflects both the horizontal and the vertical size of the font, which is measured in points. Of course, it's silly to speak of the horizontal size of a proportional font: it changes for every character. On the other hand, you *can* speak of the height of "x", or the distance between to top of "F" and the bottom of "j". The point size of a font is the vertical size of the font cell (an imaginary box large enough to contain any character of the font). BTW: an italic font of the same point size as the regular font is often smaller horizontally. The horizontal size is meaningful with non-proportional fonts. In this case, it is more common to speak of the HMI (horizontal motion index), in characters per inch (cpi). With typewriters, it is common to speak of "courier" (10 cpi) and "elite" (12 cpi). Note that the standard font for most printers is still Courier 12 - 12 points in height but 10 cpi! BTW: I don't know how Word handles the older dot matrix printers, which offered "condensed" or "expanded" fonts, i.e. the same height but another width. One last thing: When you change only the font size under MS-Word, you'll see a difference only in the horizontal spacing. This is because the default line spacing is 1 line, meaning 1/6 inch. To see the difference in vertical spacing, set the line spacing ("Format/Paragraph") to "auto". I hope this explains the confusion, Markus G. Fischer fisher@sc2a.unige.ch