Re: A proposal for units in GTK+

[Matthias Clasen <maclas gmx de>]

On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 21:33, Jonathan Blandford wrote:
> 
> Additionally, I don't know if we want to distinguish between height
and
> width of a font, as an 'em' is technically only a horizontal unit of
> measure.  Adding two font-based units seems to be possibly too
> confusing, though.

The TeXbook says (p.60)

em is the width of a "quad" in the current font;
ex is the "x-height" of the current font.

[...] It is generally best to use em for horizontal measurements and ex
for vertical measurements that depend on the current font.


But that might be more relevant for typography than for UI design...

Matthias