[Scribus] ISO page sizes

[Gregory Pittman]

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?).

Greg