FWIW, early 1980s Epson dot-matrix printers vertically spaced the dots in the print head exactly 1/72" apart, though I don't remember them calling the distance a point.
It’s an imperial measure of the number of sentences in a story. The metric version is the “Gilgamesh”, a reference to a prototype story maintained by ISO in Paris.
I had a manager institute PERT estimations for every task/sticky, which was interesting but not necessarily worth it.
In the end, the work takes the time it takes, and nobody knows how long that will be ahead of time. Fiddling around with estimates helps with ranking but not prediction.
If the work takes the time it takes and nobody knows how long with that, why not track and iterate on the predictions versus outcomes creating experience and data that would enable prediction and prediction refinement?
Over time the estimates should be trending closer to outcome, as the process improves in breaking down and specifying the details that impact prediction & work, and the statistical gap from previous estimates gets baked into future estimates. The process, capabilities, ability to identify diverging factors, and correction of initial estimates should all be maturing concurrently.
The entire point of using fuzzy numbers is to enable fuzzy yet usable predictions. Similar work in a similar situation, armed with specific statistics and outcome, should be highly predictable at the team and individual level over time.
Pixels have pitch, which is the distance between pixels. That is what is usually meant when talking about px as a measurement. It is analogous to dpi or ppi or the metric version.
I don't know what happened in my brain but i expected a piece about points as in keeping scores. Maybe about how we evolved from binary results (alive/dead in early human competitions) to more complex systems. I'd say humans played games long before being able to count. Of course competition is inherent to human nature. But i'd say, without getting into any philosophical debate, a certain amount of compassion and empathy is as well. Which must have resulted in early ideas of fairness. Especially when respect and status seem to be crucial to society.
So, how and when did points come into play?
...
Well, ok. I stop procrastinating for now (i hope). I hate my brain.
Not sure, but typefacing/fonts is absolutely cursed with this stuff. I'd be shocked if there isn't a true type font that runs DOOM. There's a reason Microsoft pushed font rendering out of the kernel in Vista. (Technically, they started the work on it)
In industry, we have. At home, most households have little or no use for US dimension tools such as wrenches. You can service a bike with all metric tools.
"Going metric" raises the question of whether we adopt metric measures for our existing standards (such as pipe threads) or actually adopt the ISO sizes. The latter would cause a brief but massive inventory management problem, that nobody's ever willing to put up with, even if there's a long term benefit.
I believe we made a mistake in how we tried to teach the metric system. I learned in first grade: Metric is easy because it's just math. Most people heard "math" and freaked out. Metric was taught as a bunch of conversions and units. Inches were taught as: Here's a ruler, go measure some things.
I remember talking to a machinist, and he said: "I hate the metric system because there's so much math." That was 30+ years ago. Today, machinists just read mm or inches from the same digital readout or CAD program.
My Canadian friends learned metric as: Here's a ruler, go measure some things.
Imperial measurements do have the benefit of more even divisors than metric.
Pretty common to talk about measurements of 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 of an inch and find those graduated on a ruler. Or 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/8 of a cup for liquid measures, etc.
But then machinists generally work in thousandth or ten-thousandths of an inch.
> "Going metric" raises the question of whether we adopt metric measures for our existing standards (such as pipe threads) or actually adopt the ISO sizes.
You adopt ISO sizes FFS. They are international standards. You really want to invent a whole new set of incompatible 'standards'?
You think the US is the first to go through this? Australia, Canada, and the UK went metric in the 1970s (we also decimalised our currencies). Yes it was challenging for some adults but mostly pretty easy for kids. People adapted. Industries adapted. Now we hardly think about it except when dealing with Americans or in some historical contexts.
For the piping example, you have all the installed infrastructure that's in the old "IPS" (straight) and "NPT" (tapered) sizes. So now a plumber needs to carry additional fittings or carry conversion fittings. Easier to just stay with what we have.
Of course it's easier to stick with what you have in the short term. Change is difficult. You do it for the long term gain. If you had done it 50 years ago like the rest of the English-speaking world you wouldn't be in this mess.
The U.S. uses metric pretty much everywhere that is important, in most science, engineering, and medicine. Specific trades and common household things remain imperial due to inertia and no one really caring. It is much more accurate to say the U.S. has a dual system. We learn metric in school like everyone else.
Points are not American, they are used for typography in Europe and everywhere else equally as much as in the US.
The metric system is poorly suited for font sizes. Most designs require a series of sizes within a small range: a typical book or poster might use 9pt for footnotes, 12pt for main text, 16pt for subtitles, and 24pt for titles.
Aesthetically speaking the most attractive ratios of sizes are small ratios like 3:2 and 4:3. Using points it is very easy to construct an attractive range of font sizes like my example above. It is difficult to imagine how this would look in a metric system that's not a mess.
My countrymen are shockingly dumb. Presented with something rational like 24-hour time, they prefer to not learn and be confused all the time instead of adopting the better way. Unless it's mandatory, such as in military or aviation, then they are happy with it and feel like part of a special in-group.
Clearly we should just use seconds, hectoseconds, kiloseconds and megaseconds, and stop worrying about whether our time lines up with the celestial movements.
And here I thought maybe time zero would be the big bang, but alas, that is too celestial, so I guess January 1st, 1970 it is. Or whatever that is in the metric calendar (10 months per year, 10 days/week, 100 days/month)
> TLDR; folks should just use PostScript (Big) Points.
The distinction ends up being important if you need compatibility with some document format, or with common typesetting expectations. But if there weren't a concern of surprising people with certain expectations of font-picking widgets, I'd argue that the better choice would be millimeters.
4mm is a great default font size, and going up by one integer mm at a time is a reasonable step size (it's just under 3pt).
Just posted the following poorly-fleshed-out comment there:
So disappointed that this document, as much as it obsesses over obscure physical quantities no one cares about, makes no mention of THE FUCK.
1 fuck is equal to the amount of concern you have about something below which you cannot achieve without having no concern at all, as which giving "zero fucks" is defined. "Absolute zero fucks" would be the formal terminology.
For preliminary purposes, we can assume 1 fuck = 1 shit = 1 damn, but must account for the possible existence of a big-point-vs-printers-point style situation. Also they could be drastically different, like if 1 shit given about global warming would be equivalent to 299_792_458 fucks or something like that.
I have very little knowledge about the *real* machinations behind the standardization of measures (a tinfoil conspiracy kook would call it an Agenda 21, or 21 Agendas One, but I'm not going there), I want this to be discussed.
Well that there is your problem, LaTeX is using imperial points, and Inkscape is using metric points.
You need to start using SI points that are defined using wavelengths of ground state emissions of a decaying Americium atom.
FWIW, early 1980s Epson dot-matrix printers vertically spaced the dots in the print head exactly 1/72" apart, though I don't remember them calling the distance a point.
EMUs always seemed weirder to me. Like an unnecessary compromise instead of just using metric outright.
https://startbigthinksmall.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/points-i...
From the title I thought this was going to be about basis points, as used in finance. (A basis point is one hundredth of 1 percentage point).
I thought it was going to be about story points.
I thought it was going to be about story points and I was going to wholeheartedly agree with the premise
what do story points measure?
It’s an imperial measure of the number of sentences in a story. The metric version is the “Gilgamesh”, a reference to a prototype story maintained by ISO in Paris.
* gigamesh
Nothing, except a story's size relative to other stories estimated by the same team.
I had a manager institute PERT estimations for every task/sticky, which was interesting but not necessarily worth it.
In the end, the work takes the time it takes, and nobody knows how long that will be ahead of time. Fiddling around with estimates helps with ranking but not prediction.
If the work takes the time it takes and nobody knows how long with that, why not track and iterate on the predictions versus outcomes creating experience and data that would enable prediction and prediction refinement?
Over time the estimates should be trending closer to outcome, as the process improves in breaking down and specifying the details that impact prediction & work, and the statistical gap from previous estimates gets baked into future estimates. The process, capabilities, ability to identify diverging factors, and correction of initial estimates should all be maturing concurrently.
The entire point of using fuzzy numbers is to enable fuzzy yet usable predictions. Similar work in a similar situation, armed with specific statistics and outcome, should be highly predictable at the team and individual level over time.
That's why my favorite unit is the px, a.k.a., 1 centiinch.
CSS pixels are weirder:
http://inamidst.com/stuff/notes/csspx
I thought px was an abbreviation of pixel which doesn't have a dimension?
Pixels have pitch, which is the distance between pixels. That is what is usually meant when talking about px as a measurement. It is analogous to dpi or ppi or the metric version.
Does the pitch describe the distance between the edges of the pixels or between the centers?
I don't know what happened in my brain but i expected a piece about points as in keeping scores. Maybe about how we evolved from binary results (alive/dead in early human competitions) to more complex systems. I'd say humans played games long before being able to count. Of course competition is inherent to human nature. But i'd say, without getting into any philosophical debate, a certain amount of compassion and empathy is as well. Which must have resulted in early ideas of fairness. Especially when respect and status seem to be crucial to society.
So, how and when did points come into play? ...
Well, ok. I stop procrastinating for now (i hope). I hate my brain.
Not sure, but typefacing/fonts is absolutely cursed with this stuff. I'd be shocked if there isn't a true type font that runs DOOM. There's a reason Microsoft pushed font rendering out of the kernel in Vista. (Technically, they started the work on it)
As someone from european continent. Those US measurements units look and feel so hard to work with.
Instead metric system is predictable and easy to work with.
Real question is why US just don't move to metric system?
In industry, we have. At home, most households have little or no use for US dimension tools such as wrenches. You can service a bike with all metric tools.
"Going metric" raises the question of whether we adopt metric measures for our existing standards (such as pipe threads) or actually adopt the ISO sizes. The latter would cause a brief but massive inventory management problem, that nobody's ever willing to put up with, even if there's a long term benefit.
I believe we made a mistake in how we tried to teach the metric system. I learned in first grade: Metric is easy because it's just math. Most people heard "math" and freaked out. Metric was taught as a bunch of conversions and units. Inches were taught as: Here's a ruler, go measure some things.
I remember talking to a machinist, and he said: "I hate the metric system because there's so much math." That was 30+ years ago. Today, machinists just read mm or inches from the same digital readout or CAD program.
My Canadian friends learned metric as: Here's a ruler, go measure some things.
Imperial measurements do have the benefit of more even divisors than metric.
Pretty common to talk about measurements of 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 of an inch and find those graduated on a ruler. Or 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/8 of a cup for liquid measures, etc.
But then machinists generally work in thousandth or ten-thousandths of an inch.
> "Going metric" raises the question of whether we adopt metric measures for our existing standards (such as pipe threads) or actually adopt the ISO sizes.
You adopt ISO sizes FFS. They are international standards. You really want to invent a whole new set of incompatible 'standards'?
You think the US is the first to go through this? Australia, Canada, and the UK went metric in the 1970s (we also decimalised our currencies). Yes it was challenging for some adults but mostly pretty easy for kids. People adapted. Industries adapted. Now we hardly think about it except when dealing with Americans or in some historical contexts.
For the piping example, you have all the installed infrastructure that's in the old "IPS" (straight) and "NPT" (tapered) sizes. So now a plumber needs to carry additional fittings or carry conversion fittings. Easier to just stay with what we have.
Of course it's easier to stick with what you have in the short term. Change is difficult. You do it for the long term gain. If you had done it 50 years ago like the rest of the English-speaking world you wouldn't be in this mess.
The U.S. uses metric pretty much everywhere that is important, in most science, engineering, and medicine. Specific trades and common household things remain imperial due to inertia and no one really caring. It is much more accurate to say the U.S. has a dual system. We learn metric in school like everyone else.
Can't wait for us to adopt the metric Avogadro constant. I wonder what units they use for the Hubble constant in Europe (love me some megaparsecs).
> why US just don't move to metric system?
They've been trying for a long time, but apparently it's not an easy task.
You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...
Points are not American, they are used for typography in Europe and everywhere else equally as much as in the US.
The metric system is poorly suited for font sizes. Most designs require a series of sizes within a small range: a typical book or poster might use 9pt for footnotes, 12pt for main text, 16pt for subtitles, and 24pt for titles.
Aesthetically speaking the most attractive ratios of sizes are small ratios like 3:2 and 4:3. Using points it is very easy to construct an attractive range of font sizes like my example above. It is difficult to imagine how this would look in a metric system that's not a mess.
Font sizes would be perfectly fine in millimetres. 9 pt ≅ 3 mm, 12 pt ≅ 4 mm, 18 pt ≅ 6 mm, 24 pt ≅ 8 mm. The difference is about 6%.
My countrymen are shockingly dumb. Presented with something rational like 24-hour time, they prefer to not learn and be confused all the time instead of adopting the better way. Unless it's mandatory, such as in military or aviation, then they are happy with it and feel like part of a special in-group.
>something rational like 24-hour time
Shouldn't the real smarties be using 10-hour days using metric time? 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute.
https://timeity.com/metric-time/
Clearly we should just use seconds, hectoseconds, kiloseconds and megaseconds, and stop worrying about whether our time lines up with the celestial movements.
And here I thought maybe time zero would be the big bang, but alas, that is too celestial, so I guess January 1st, 1970 it is. Or whatever that is in the metric calendar (10 months per year, 10 days/week, 100 days/month)
My grandfather gave me a mechanical pocketwatch stopwatch that counts tenths of a minute. Every gradation on the dial is 6 seconds. It's bizarre.
Reddit level post.
If Europeans are so smart, why didn't they commit to metric time which is soon much easier to understand?
At least 24 hour time is monotonic through the day. Baby steps.
Unless you're talking to someone in a different time zone.
Europe should just have one time zone on a one day clocks divided into decidays and centidays.
> Real question is why US just don't move to metric system?
Because we live in a land of liberty!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk
taht`s perfect 4 europeans
[dead]
TLDR; folks should just use PostScript (Big) Points.
The mention of
https://frinklang.org/
is kind of interesting --- hadn't heard of it before --- may need to revisit the "ProportionBar" tool which I made ages ago....
> TLDR; folks should just use PostScript (Big) Points.
The distinction ends up being important if you need compatibility with some document format, or with common typesetting expectations. But if there weren't a concern of surprising people with certain expectations of font-picking widgets, I'd argue that the better choice would be millimeters.
4mm is a great default font size, and going up by one integer mm at a time is a reasonable step size (it's just under 3pt).
Just posted the following poorly-fleshed-out comment there:
So disappointed that this document, as much as it obsesses over obscure physical quantities no one cares about, makes no mention of THE FUCK.
1 fuck is equal to the amount of concern you have about something below which you cannot achieve without having no concern at all, as which giving "zero fucks" is defined. "Absolute zero fucks" would be the formal terminology.
For preliminary purposes, we can assume 1 fuck = 1 shit = 1 damn, but must account for the possible existence of a big-point-vs-printers-point style situation. Also they could be drastically different, like if 1 shit given about global warming would be equivalent to 299_792_458 fucks or something like that.
I have very little knowledge about the *real* machinations behind the standardization of measures (a tinfoil conspiracy kook would call it an Agenda 21, or 21 Agendas One, but I'm not going there), I want this to be discussed.
[dead]