Re: Font point sizes and X resolutions?
On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 09:07:33AM -0600, Richard C. Cobbe wrote:
> 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.
I know a little bit about this, being pedantic enough to want to set up
X 'correctly'.
Xfree86 4.0.x has better display size support than 3.3.6. 3.3.6 assumes
that you have square pixels, and you have to tell it the DPI for your
monitor. 4.0.x has a config file option for the horizontal and vertical
displayed area in milimeters, per monitor. The best method I've come
across to measure the display is to use the gimp1.2 display calibration
tool which will pop up a ruler you can measure against (similar to the
one in windows) and do all the calculations, then you just divide the
resolution by gimp's monitor resolution in px/mm to get the displayed
area in mm, and plug that into X, in the DisplaySize line. Here's the
section from my config.
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "CTXmonitor"
VendorName "CTX"
ModelName "17 incher"
HorizSync 31.5-75.5
VertRefresh 50-100
DisplaySize 321 238
Modeline "1280x1024" 108.00 1280 1308 1420 1688
1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync
EndSection
Remember, this is for XFree86 4.0.x
I still haven't figured out how to arrange the font path for best efects
yet, and we still have I don't know how many apps that still use
pixel-sized fonts... But at least it can be fixed, unlike that other OS.
Mozilla, you need to set the display DPI down to 0, in the preferences.
-- Ferret
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