The fact remains that the EGA actually displays 68 pixels per horizontal inch and 51 pixels per vertical inch. The logical inch is some 40 percent larger than the real inch. Why not simply base the fonts on the real dimensions of the EGA display and forget about this logical-inch business?
On paper, 8-point type with about 14 characters per horizontal inch is perfectly readable. If you were programming a word-processing or page-composition application for Windows, you would want to be able to show legible 8-point type on the display. But if you used the actual dimensions of the video display, each character would be about 6 pixels high and 5 pixels wide. Such characters would not be legible. Even if the display had sufficient resolution, you might still have problems reading actual 8-point type on a screen. When people read print on paper, the distance between the eyes and the paper is generally about a foot, but a video display is commonly viewed from a distance of 2 feet. The logical inch in effect provides a magnification of the screen, allowing the display of legible fonts in a size as small as 8-point. You can see this magnification effect in Windows WRITE when you display the ruler at the top of the client area.
Note also that having 96 pixels per logical inch horizontally makes the 640-pixel-wide display of the CGA and EGA equal to about 6.5 logical inches. This is precisely the width of text that you'll print on 8.5-inch-wide paper when you use margins of an inch on each side. So the logical inch also takes advantage of the width of the screen to allow text to be displayed as large as possible.
This whole subject of logical inches is relevant only for the video display. For printers, a logical inch is the same as a real inch.