Font size in pixels

iphone cocoa font-size typography
Ian1971 picture Ian1971 · Jun 29, 2009 · Viewed 68.3k times · Source

On an iPhone how do I calculate the size of a character in pixels for a given point size?

Answer

Naaff picture Naaff · Jun 29, 2009

Point sizes are defined as 1/72 of an inch. That is, a 72-point font is approximately 1 inch from the lowest descent to the highest ascent. So the maximum height of a glyph in a 72pt font is about 1 inch.

Apple's iphone tech specs page claims that the iPhone currently has a resolution of 163 pixels per inch. So 72 points is 163 pixels, or about 2.2639 pixels per point. Just remember that every glyph varies in height and width, so this is a very rough estimate of size. Generally, the distance between baselines will be a bit larger than the font's point size so that lines of text don't crash into each other.

If you need exact measurements (and you probably do) then you'll need to actually measure the font glyphs using the font metric information. You can do this by using NSString's UIKit additions, which will let you measure the size of a particular string when rendered on screen.

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