Comment 30 for bug 727733

Cody: The plan is a 50/56 (89...%) scaling relative to the x-height of the main proportional fonts, this gives a 500x1000 design square which everything can be fitted into. I'm sorry that this decision wasn't updated here on the bug report.

Bruno, Mark, Ivanka, Marcus and I had a meeting last week on 2011-04-18 to review the various bug reports that were blocking things and the possible solutions. From the comments and discussions, the 500 width seems to work out better. The plan is:

  1. Ubuntu Mono 500x1000 design box (scale by 56/50 == 89.2857%)
  2. All vertically-/double-stack accents within this design box
  3. All horizontally-/double-stack accents within this design box
  4. Line drawing/box characters touching this design box
  5. One em default line-spacing/zero typo-gap

This gives:

  * By default helps to differentiate Ubuntu proportional and Ubuntu Mono in the same line of text at the same font size. (If you don't want that, it's simple to apply a 12% font-size increase)
  * Keeps the overall line length about the same (because of spaces, Ubuntu Mono would be longer without)
  * Allows the Ubuntu Mono to be used as an 8x16 bitmap console font
  * Gives a 12 CPI (characters per inch). As a reference this is the same as Inconsolata

Hope that's useful! (And sorry for not having written it sooner).