Re: Amendments in calc-units.el

[Miles Bader <snogglethorpe@gmail.com>]

2005/10/19, Jay Belanger <belanger@truman.edu>:
> > I suspect more calc users use postscript points than "real points"...
>
> I don't have a strong opinion on this, but would using "point" for
> PostScript point be less accurate?

I dunno; I did a bit of googling the last time I searched, and the
name "point" is a lot more vague than I previously thought -- there
are like 5 different kinds of "points" used historically, all of which
are annoyingly close to each other, but different enough to cause
problems.

However I think people _do_ use the term, and would be surprised if it
isn't understood.  If you're gonna pick something to resolve an
ambiguous term, your decision is inevitably going to be wrong for
somebody, but by picking the most commonly used definition, at least
you reduce the number of such cases.

[Maybe 25 years ago, the tex definition would have been the best
resolution, but I don't think that's true now.]

> Also, using "point" for point (of
> whatever kind) and "tpt" for TeX point lacks symmetry; perhaps
> "texpoint" for TeX point would be better.

Well you're probably right that it should be "pspoint", with an alias.
 [The common name for what tex uses seems to be "typographer's point"]

-miles
--
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