Re: Font point sizes and X resolutions?

[Bruce Sass <bsass@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca>]

On Thu, 22 Mar 2001 idalton@ferret.phonewave.net wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 09:07:33AM -0600, Richard C. Cobbe wrote:
> > Lo, on Wednesday, March 21, Stan Brown did write:
<...>
> I know a little bit about this, being pedantic enough to want to set up
> X 'correctly'.
<...>
> 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

I've done a similar thing with X-3.3.6, manually, at the urging of the
LyX documentation... it was worth the effort (as was promised if the
actual dpi was more than 5 from what X was using.

- switch to your most common display mode
- set the background color to something other than the border color
- measure the width of the visible display area
- divide the number of pixels by the measurement to get the actual dpi

e.g., the display measures 274mm across (= 10.787 in.) with 1024
pixels... 1024 / 10.787 = 94.929 pixels per inch, or 95 dpi

- tell the Xserver the correct dpi
  (snoop around /etc/X11, it is not in the XF86Config file
   for 3.3.6, but is clearly marked).


- Bruce