Re: DPI, font size, and Debian

[Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org>]

On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 08:26:38AM -0600, Billy Biggs <vektor@dumbterm.net> wrote:
>   1. Other operating systems do not use the screen's DPI when rendering
>      fonts.  On Windows, there is a different function to determine the
>      real DPI of the display, separate from the DPI used in text
>      rendering.  This seems to work well in practice.

It's not because other systems do stupid things that we must do the
same. With such way of thinking, we would end up with a huge amount of
crap.

>   2. Font hints are designed for specific font sizes at certain common
>      DPIs.  There is value in using a small set of "standard" DPI values
>      for UI rendering.   (see http://scanline.ca/dpi/fonts.html)

Then fix font hinting. While differences of 2 dpi seem to make an ugly
difference, i'm pretty sure a difference of 10 does not.

>   3. DPI becomes more complicated given different display devices such
>      as data projectors.

I don't see why. The only problem that could happen is that when
plugging in the new display, X doesn't know instantly that the dpi
changed.

>   Originally, I argued that both the DPI values from the X server and
> from Xft should be the same thing, and that this should be the
> "canonical DPI" used for UI rendering.  As many people have pointed out
> in this thread, there are other uses for the "real DPI", and furthermore
> there is some prior art in that these are two separate values on
> Windows.  So, by sticking to separately configured DPI values with Xft
> makes sense, as does choosing a default canonical value of 96 DPI.

And all I see is that you want to copy what sucks in windows about dpi
handling.

Mike