What does the letter P stand for?

[Mike Witherell]

Hey gang,

In the rotation icon in the Control Panel of InDesign, what does the letter "P" stand for?

Mike wants to know!

[BobLevine]

That's just crazy talk.

[Steve Werner]

I'll vote for Danny's guess.

[Danny Whitehead.]

There's only one way to find out...

Set every capital letter of the alphabet in Photoshop, create all 8 iterations of rotation and flipping for each, then gaussian blur them all, increasing the radius until they're all indistinguishable. The last one wins. I bet it'll be P.

[winterm]

In the next century, look at your wireless Manipulator for Management of the Cursor on a Computer, and tell me why it was called mouse? Without even knowing there were ancient models, connected with cord?

Why computer related (hardware/software) errors are called bugs? It's not possible to say without knowing the history.

I don't think someone ever played in Photoshop, seeking for the *best* letter to represent rotation / flipping. There's a bunch of other letters which may serve just fine. I imagine some dev years ago spent couple of seconds choosing a letter for a visualization of rotation. Was it for Page, Portrait, Paper, Position? Find him and ask if he's still alive, or look in computer history resources.

That P is way older than InDesign with all its panels.

[Danny Whitehead.]

winterm  wrote

There's a bunch of other letters which may serve just fine.

None quite as well, though. The Photoshop blurring thing was tongue in cheek, but it would actually work. So would squinting!

If I were to guess, I'd guess it was chosen when developing the Mac/LaserWriter UI, or maybe it was established before then in phototypesetting machines (did anyone here ever operate one?). I bet John Warnock would know.

[Mike Witherell]

Jeffrey, I'm looking for the definitive historical origin. I actually don't know the answer. But I'm in the business of answering questions for students (and myself, as a long-time practitioner of this page layout art).

I like the theory that it comes from the P in the print dialog box imagery. The word Portrait sounds likely, but I wish we could trace the origin, and know for sure.

[Peter Villevoye]

Next up, Clarus the dogcow - Wikipedia ...

[beto correa]

​P ​- position

Why "P"?

Is not symmetrical. It helps to visualize "portrait". "landscape" and flipped.

I think it's this.

[Steve Werner]

I agree. Which is why Danny Whitehead wrote above: "Set every capital letter of the alphabet in Photoshop, create all 8 iterations of rotation and flipping for each, then gaussian blur them all, increasing the radius until they're all indistinguishable. The last one wins. I bet it'll be P."

[Barb Binder]

Not Phlipped.

~Barb