Posted by Jonathan N. Little on 12/06/06 14:25

Chris Chiasson wrote:

> An inline graphic is displayed, by default, with its lower edge on the
> baseline of the text surrounding the graphic. If the surrounding text
> changes size or font face, the location of the baseline could move, but
> the graphic would still have its lower edge on the baseline. Since I am
> setting the vertical-align property to the negative of the distance
> from the graphic's lower edge to the internal baseline of the image -
> the distance needs to be a fixed distance.
>
> There is a good argument for expressing that distance in pixels, but I
> really don't see the case for em or %.

For a character the distance from the baseline to the bottom is the
descender length. That will change with the scaling of the font. Keeping
a proportional spacing for this dimension one would use a unit that was
proportionally linked to the font, "em" or "%". But if you are aligning
a static graphic, especially with some discrete offset to the text
baseline then yes you should use "px" since a pixel is a pixel on your
monitor or mine. The graphic is in pixels so if the offset is in pixels
the offset will remain constant. Where I had issue was using *points*.
Point, inches, centimeters, and such are not "constant" with respect to
the screen and are not the type of unit that you should have used in the
described application.

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

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