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

CSS pixels are weirder:

http://inamidst.com/stuff/notes/csspx

I thought px was an abbreviation of pixel which doesn't have a dimension?

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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

> 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).

[dead]