Text height

[jawsfree]

I am trying to make a label for a beer can. The warning text is required to be 2mm in height. I have tried to use the text tool and set the size by mm but if I set it to 2mm it only make the text height 1.27mm when I am checking with the measure tool. I am using Calibri light font. Which direction is the text tool using to make the size?

[rich2005]

I do not know why ? Have you tried with some other font, However

Putting in the 2 mm text is like this here. Remember the 2mm is not the height of the lowercase it is the dimensions of a rectangle specified in the font file.

   

If you want to check what an image looks like printed, then turn off dot-for-dot in the view menu and set the zoom to 100%.
You can use a ruler to check the text height on your computer screen, although an exact 2mm might be difficult to measure .

   

[Ofnuts]

As Rich says, but if plain/undecorated text is an important part of the project, a typesetting app like Scribus is a better choice (Gimp can still be used to produce the image(s) inserted in the text.

[zeuspaul]

Have you tried using scale layer to adjust the size after it has been made?

[rich2005]

I would not use scaling for this, the relevant bit for fonts is

The size of type, whether specified in pixels, points (1/72") or millimetres, is the height of an em-square, an invisible box which is typically a bit larger than the distance from the tallest ascender to the lowest descender.

I finally pulled from Windows, Calibri Light and say from the j descender to the l ascender is about 2 mm.
Remember Gimp works in pixels  and if (I hope ) your label is at least 300 ppi resolution then 23 pix = 1.95 mm and 24 pix = 2.03 mm (2 mm not possible)

For the height of a capital letter = 2 mm maybe use a font height of 3 mm