Re: DPI, font size, and Debian

[Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org>]

On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 09:38:06AM -0600, Billy Biggs <vektor@dumbterm.net> wrote:
> [...]
>   I think that's fair enough, I mean, I think the font design problem is
> somewhat intractable and therefore you'll never get great-looking text
> at small pixel sizes, but we can happily diagree on this point.  I don't
> want to stop you from configuring your system this way.

Thanks for understanding my point of view

>   My priority is solving the practical problem we have today:  many
> Linux users by default are given systems with seemingly random DPI
> values, and they have to go configure all of their fonts.  Can we agree
> that this is a problem worth solving?  Standardizing the default DPI
> value at the Xft level rather than the X server level seems to have
> better consensus, so I think it is a good start.

I can only talk about my experience with X, but the only problems I got
were:
- badly detected screen size making the dpi to be a default 75dpi.
- dpi being forced in ?dm at 100dpi.

The second issue is obvious to solve: just stop to force the dpi this
way.
The first one would need more input. As I understand it (but it's only
with my limited experience of it), X fallsback to 75dpi when it can't
correctly detect display size. Wouldn't changing this fallback value to
96dpi be a much more pleasant solution ?

> [...]
>   My point was simply that there is a lot of practical evidence that
> this method works well, especially on the Mac which seems quite popular
> for desktop publishing.

Actually the Mac problem is that their quite ridiculous dpi setting is
used to justify their pretty bad LCD screens (as per pixel density)

>   The problem is that these display devices reduce the value of using
> the "real" DPI for UI rendering.

Actually, X seeded DPI being calculated from pixel size on display,
using XRandR to resize the display to the external display resolution
will bring a useable and probably expected result.

Mike