[Scribus] ISO page sizes

[Louis Desjardins]

>Gregory Pittman wrote:
>
>>I would think that points came about as part of an effort to have a 
>>unit small enough to measure useful font sizes in whole numbers.
>
>It's always good to be able to respond to your own emails with 
>better information.  See 
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_unit -- some tidbits follow.
>
>Well, Louis Desjardins will be interested to learn that the whole 
>concept and execution of points in typography is quite French -- 
>Fran?ois-Ambroise Didot came up with this in about 1783 as a 
>modification of an idea by Pierre Simon Fournier.  Didot's 
>modification based the measurement on the standard French Royal 
>inch, or pouce (Fournier was a little less precise).
>
>The American Point System came about in 1886, but was based on the 
>original idea of Fournier -- 1/6 of an inch (American) is a pica, 
>1/12 of a pica is a point. Or at least conceptually.  Then, as now, 
>Big Business will have its say, and some influential type foundries 
>had their own ideas and therefore it was decided that 83 picas = 35 
>mm (how do you like the math of that?).

Delightful.

The part I like most, I think, is: "it was decided"...

Louis

>
>Greg
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