How to determine a text size by actual print measurement?

I write an H, convert it to outlines and get all the meassures of cap height.

For anyone coming to this old thread: I wrote a script that takes another approach altogther—it ignores the font metrics and gives you the actual bounding box of the selected glyphs.

- Mark

Hi danezeq,

so in effect you need a tool that will format selected text so that the height of say, the letter "H", is a distinct value in millimeters? Think, that Gerald Singelmann did a script for this purpose about 10 years ago. Ah. Found it:

Reale Buchstabenhöhe in mm bestimmen

Gerald Singelmann

https://www.cuppascript.com/reale-buchstabenhoehe-in-mm-bestimmen/

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

It sounds like you want to measure the Cap Height, which is not the point size.

You can get the cap height via scripting. This is adapted from a script Uwe Laubender posted awhile back. Displays the cap height of a selected character:

var doc = app.documents[0];  
var docViewPrefs = doc.viewPreferences.properties;
doc.viewPreferences.horizontalMeasurementUnits = MeasurementUnits.POINTS;
doc.viewPreferences.verticalMeasurementUnits = MeasurementUnits.POINTS;
var sel = doc.selection[0];
app.copy();

var textFrame = doc.textFrames.add({geometricBounds: [0,0,"100mm","100mm"], textFramePreferences: {firstBaselineOffset: FirstBaseline.CAP_HEIGHT, insetSpacing: 0, minimumFirstBaselineOffset: 0, verticalJustification: VerticalJustification.TOP_ALIGN}});  
        
app.select([textFrame.parentStory.insertionPoints[0]])    
app.paste();
var ch = textFrame.texts[0].insertionPoints[0].baseline;

textFrame.remove();

doc.viewPreferences.properties = docViewPrefs;

alert( "Selected character’s Cap Height= " + ch + " Points);

Yes. With a Type Scale Tool.

Commonly called an E-scale, a see-through type gauge/ruler works by lining up a capital letter against the "E"s to translate what you see into a type size specification. In the example above, it also lets you use the leading scales to measure space between type lines in the type slug, and, with practice, can offer more type size scales between Top of Caps and Base of Descenders.

Hope this helps,

Randy

If I'm understanding your question correctly, you mean the actual size of a letter. For instance, the exact measurement of an upper-case letter or possibly the X-height. As an example, there's is no way to enter an exact measurement of a cap letter in a character field. The cap letters and and/or x-height of lower-case characters can be entirely different in differing typefaces. 

Point size is not the measurement of letters. It measures the distance from the baseline of one line of type up to the baseline of the line of type above. 

You can enter other measurements in the Font Size field as usual, f.e. "1.25cm".

But do note that there is no straightforward relation between "font size" and how large exactly the text is in your document! (A very easy to understand reason is, "the size of what character?" It's a bit more complicated than that, but it's a good starting point to think about.) Nevertheless, entering a size in a measurement unit of your choice could be close enough for you.

Type size for Print? Digital?

what are you confused about? You don't know what size font you should use?

can you elaborate?