No, 1 pt is roughly 1/72" (well, today it might be exactly, but originally it was a different unit). We can "overload" the unit to mean something else, but saying a text size is 12pt is the same as saying it is 1/6 of an inch.
Now, it is my opinion that operating systems should offer reasonable font sizes to their users, and 12pt is probably good for desktops (hum, how about using webcam to estimate the distance of the person's head [using the average human face width :]), whereas something else is good for phones and projectors.
All applications should use relative font sizes for everything else that's not in the default font size.
Gtk+ applications scale beautifully on the desktop (imho, at least, though I am sure it's easy to find counter-examples) with differing font sizes (and text lengths, very common with localization), but they do not scale well to smaller devices (projectors, otoh, which are just enlarged desktops, are usually fine): it seems to work well with a certain minimum size.
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Re: What is the point of points then?
Date: 2012-07-13 10:22 am (UTC)Now, it is my opinion that operating systems should offer reasonable font sizes to their users, and 12pt is probably good for desktops (hum, how about using webcam to estimate the distance of the person's head [using the average human face width :]), whereas something else is good for phones and projectors.
All applications should use relative font sizes for everything else that's not in the default font size.
Gtk+ applications scale beautifully on the desktop (imho, at least, though I am sure it's easy to find counter-examples) with differing font sizes (and text lengths, very common with localization), but they do not scale well to smaller devices (projectors, otoh, which are just enlarged desktops, are usually fine): it seems to work well with a certain minimum size.
- Danilo