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Discussion on: Typography basics and best practices for software developers

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leob profile image
leob

Totally new to me, ch, never heard of it ...

So, 'ch' is something like the "amount" of text, horizontally, for a line or paragraph. If you use many W's or M's then way fewer characters will fit in 50ch than when you use i's or j's ... which makes the "amount of text to process" in a line 'constant' for the user (for lack of a better description).

At least for variable width fonts (for fixed width fonts an i and a W have the same width).

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zeanqin profile image
Zean Qin • Edited

At least for variable width fonts (for fixed width fonts an i and a W have the same width).

Oh, this is a very good point. I didn't think of this - so using ch with monospaced typefaces would result in (probably) same amount of characters on every (full) line.