name of font in between block and regular letters

We can also predict that capital letters are 68px high (680 units) and lower case letters (x-height) are 49px high (485 units).

You can think of the content-area as the area where the background property applies 2.

This computed height defines the content-area of an element and I will refer to this terminology for the rest of the article. That means the Catamaran font uses 1100 + 540 units in a 1000 units em-square, which gives a height of 164px when setting font-size: 100px. We also note that Capital Height is 680 and X height is 485.

After running some tests, it seems that browsers use the HHead Ascent/ Descent values on Mac OS, and Win Ascent/ Descent values on Windows (these values may differ!).

the ascender is 1100 and the descender is 540.

Let’s take the Catamaran font and open it in FontForge to get metrics:

in the browser, relative units are scaled to fit the desired font-size.

Note that some values can bleed outside of the em-square.

based on its relative units, metrics of the fonts are set (ascender, descender, capital height, x-height, etc.).

But it can also be 1024, 2048 or anything else. This square uses relative units and is generally set at 1000 units.

a font defines its em-square (or UPM, units per em), a kind of container where each character will be drawn.

The reason lays down inside the font itself. Using the same font-size with different font-families produce elements with various heights: Different font-families, same font-size, give various heightsĮven if we’re aware of that behavior, why font-size: 100px does not create elements with 100px height? I’ve measured and found these values: Helvetica: 115px, Gruppo: 97px and Catamaran: 164px Elements with font-size: 100px have height that varies from 97px to 164pxĪlthough it seems a bit weird at first, it’s totally expected. Look at this simple HTML code, a tag containing 3, each with a different font-family: We know that unitless line-height is font-size relative, but the problem is that font-size: 100px behaves differently across font-families, so is line-height always the same or different? Is it really between 1 and 1.2? And vertical-align, what are its implications regarding line-height?ĭeep dive into a not-so-simple CSS mechanism… Let’s talk about font-size first OK, but what normal is? We often read that it is (or should be) 1, or maybe 1.2, even the CSS spec is unclear on that point. They really are complex, maybe the hardest ones, as they have a major role in the creation of one of the less-known feature of CSS: inline formatting context.įor example, line-height can be set as a length or a unitless value 1, but the default is normal.

So simple that most of us are convinced to fully understand how they work and how to use them. Line-height and vertical-align are simple CSS properties.

Name of font in between block and regular letters