Re: Openoffice.org

[David Mosberger <davidm@napali.hpl.hp.com>]

In retrospect, it's clear that this isn't strictly ia64 related, but I
suspect others on this list might run into the same problem and since
it's easy to waste hours on this problem, I thought a heads-up may be
in place:

If you use OpenOffice, make certain that your X server reports square
pixels (i.e., "xdpyinfo" must report the same "dots per inch" value
for the horizontal and vertical dimensions).  If the pixels aren't
square, OpenOffice will scale all boxes (such as the paper size) but
it will _not_ scale the fonts.  As a result, you'll get confused
layouts because text that used to fit in a box suddenly fits no longer
(or vice versa).  Worse, it will even generate PDF files with the
incorrect layout.  This is definitely an issue with (anti-aliased)
TrueType fonts, but I suspect the same holds true for Type1 fonts (and
the bitmap fonts are non-scalable by definition).  Actually, it
appears that the Xft render also doesn't handle non-square pixels (can
ayeone confirm)?

For what it's worth, XFree86 v4.3.0 connected to to a DDC-capable
monitor is perfectly happy to report non-square pixels.  For example,
by default my monitor (HP A4331D) at 1280x1024 came out at 83x89 dpi,
which was just different enough to cause subtle layout-differences in
OpenOffice.  The problem can be worked around by specifying the
DisplaySize option in the "Monitor" section of XF86Config-4.  For
1280x1024, this line would force 89x89 dpi:

        DisplaySize 365 292

Regards,

	--david