OT : Font Heights pt vs. inch

[sbrown]

does anyone know the conversion between the way word / adobe, etc specifies text heights at a 12pt, 14pt, etc and inches or any "real" measurement.

I'm asking because I'm constantly needing to match adobe documents text heights in revit.

[aaronrumple]

A point (pt) is approx. 1/72" of an inch, but this takes into account ascenders and descenders, so it gets a little more complex as some fonts have no ascenders/descenders and others are quite exaggerated. So two fonts can have the same point size and look to be very different sizes.

A Postscript point is set at .013888". I have no idea if True Type fonts follow this standard.

(Remember point size was from an era of moulded lead type, so the rule come from this process and have nothing to do with the way text is produced today...)

[archjake]

Ahhh.. Points and Picas. Always fun!

A Postscript point is 1/72 of an inch.

There is a chart located at::
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=76388#XSLTH3121121122120121120120

[janunson]

Problem is this point size is supposed to be the minimum height between baselines in running text, so it's somewhat subjective to the designer, and fonts with Higher ratio of X-height to Ascender height will appear bigger at the same point size.