Posted by Sherman Pendley on 01/10/08 03:41

richard <I.dont.care@do.you> writes:

> Another thing, the way I see it, a screen is nothing more than a fancy
> sheet of paper.

With the "fancy" part being that the reader can resize it at will.

It's a very important distinction. You can't depend on this "paper" to be
8.5" wide, for instance. We have no idea how wide this paper is, and we
can't expect it to stay that size.

> Inches and points are defined by a standard that was
> around well before electronics came into the world.

You'd be right, if the translation from inches and points to pixels onscreen
were reliably accurate. Sadly, it's not. :-(

That 6in width in your style sheet might be anywhere from 4-8in wide on
screen. That 10pt text might be a readable 12px on your monitor, but on
mine it's 4px tall.

It's not the *idea* of using physical units that's the problem; it's the
fact that the implementation is unreliable at the moment.

sherm--

--
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

[Back to original message]