Re: Tick Reduction

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Emacs knows that for each character it displays.  (Assuming I
> understand what "x-height of a character" means in this context.)  We
> get the full metrics of the character from the font, and use that for
> layout.

The x-height is literally the height of the lower-case x character.  😀
But it's used as a shorthand to say something about the characteristics
of a font -- the x-height is what matters most for legibility, and the
ascenders (in characters like "b") and descenders (in characters like
"g") are separate things.

Fonts with equal heights but different x-heights mix badly visually.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no