Re: Font point sizes and X resolutions?
Lo, on Wednesday, March 21, Stan Brown did write:
> On Wed Mar 21 22:13:32 2001 Richard C. Cobbe wrote...
> >
> >Lo, on Wednesday, March 21, Stan Brown did write:
> >
> >[reformatted for 80 cols]
> >
> >> How can I set up X properly so that the fonts are displayed in the proper
> >> (eg 1/72 inch per point) size?
> >
> >Can't do 72dpi, but you can do 75dpi, which is close enough. Take a look
> >at your font path (in /etc/X11/XF86Config by default on potato; this may
> >well be different for woody/sid). Make sure the 75dpi entries precede the
> >100dpi entries, then restart X.
[80 cols, again.]
> Maybe I did not make my question clear, or perhaps I'm just to dumb
> to understand the answer.
>
> Let me elaborate. As I increase the resolutin (more pixels) on the
> screen, the font's just get smaller. I don't think this is the way
> it should work. I suspect I have something configured wrong. At one
> point in time, during the install I was asked what size monitor I
> had, I answered 17". Well now I have a 19" atached to this
> system. How do I tell X what the dimensions of the screen are, so
> that it can display say a 12 point font as something aproaching a
> real 12 point typeface, instead of some unreadably small size?
Ah. Now I understand. Rather unfortunately, this may not be possible.
There's a great deal to X font handling that I'm still learning, so it's
possible that I'm overlooking something, but I don't think we can do this.
As far as I can tell, X generally treats fonts in terms of pixels, not
points. I don't know of a feature through which you can automatically
rescale every font. You can usually change the fonts on an
application-by-application basis, typically through X resource database
settings.
Or, you can follow my earlier advice, but since your fonts are too small,
put the 75dpi entries *AFTER* the 100dpi entries. This won't change
everything, but it will help.
If anyone else knows a better way to address this, please let us know; I'm
sort of curious myself.
Richard
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