Re: DPI, font size, and Debian

[Billy Biggs <vektor@dumbterm.net>]

  Hi Mike, I think we're getting somewhere.

Mike Hommey (mh@glandium.org):

> > 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.

  I think we agree on this.  My opinion was that either every display
manager set the DPI in their config file (and that be the "one" place)
or its done elsewhere.  Consensus seems to be to do it elsewhere.

> 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 ?

  It's a good idea (I would be in support of this for sure).  However,
my experience supporting users on IRC is that it is rare that X gets
this far.  Usually DDC provides some values, and X will end up
calculating anything between 80 and 133 DPI.  If we're talking about
patches for the X server, I would like to see it default to 96 DPI, and
not use DDC unless explicitly requested in the config file.

  I think it would be productive to get this changed there, and we could
use this as a migration plan.  In the mean time, I still think the Xft
DPI change is the right thing to do in Debian until we have an X server
with these modifications.

  -Billy