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"point size" is not usable as a term


From: Bjarni Ingi Gislason
Subject: "point size" is not usable as a term
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2021 01:37:49 +0000
User-agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13)

  Bug #60403 (closed) unified the writing of "point-size" to "point
size".

  The problem is,
that this coinage does not make sense.

  The "point" in this compound,
is a name of a unit of measurement,
is thus a constant,
but its definition
(size, numerical value)
depends of the used measurement system
(system of units).

  The right term is "type size",
which is usually measured (stated) in "typographic points".

  It is too common,
that people use a measurement unit to express a name for a physical
quantity,
instead of the name of the quantity,
or in this case, the object with an additional "size" attribution.

N.B.

  The object is not a point (physical representation of the punctuation
mark "point") or a similar looking spot.

  The term "point size" is used in several manuals of the groff
software.

-- 
Bjarni I. Gislason



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