Re: Face header

[Bertrand Petit]

On Fri, May 12, 2000 at 03:44:17PM +0200, Antoine Leca wrote:
> typography was no exception ;-)). So when it comes to typography, request
> was made to change from the existing Didot point to a new point, which should
> be directly related to the new "metre": the value was chosen to be 0.4 mm,

        It was not requested, Didot decided himself to "metrify" his
point.


> end up with a point that mesured 0.39877 mm (I took Bertrand's value
> as correct, I did not checked it), i.e. a 0.3 % error.

        That definition of the IN point and the Didot choice came from
"Lexique des règles typographiques en vigueur à l'Imprimerie
Nationale" ISBN 2-11-081075-0.

        Another document is quite interesting on this topic is "Guide
for the Use of the International System of Units (SI)", Barry
N. Taylor, NIST Special Publication 811 (available from
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu).

        This document define two kinds of points:

point (computer) (1 / 72 in)  millimeter (mm)  3.527 778 x 10^-1
point (printer's)             millimeter (mm)  3.514 598 x 10^-1

        Chapter six (Rules and Style Conventions for Printing and
Using Units), nine (Rules and Style Conventions for Spelling Unit
Names), and 10 (More on Printing and Using Symbols and Numbers in
Scientific and Technical Documents) are also valuable to typeset
technical and scientific documents.

-- 
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