Re: DPI, font size, and Debian

[Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org>]

On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 12:55:20PM -0600, Billy Biggs <vektor@dumbterm.net> wrote:
>   - Font hints are not designed for small pixel sizes at arbitrary
>     DPIs.  I have shown this via screenshots which I posted.

See Keith's answer

>   - GNOME defaults to a 10 point font for the application font.  My
>     experience dictates that users find this too small on their
>     autodetected 80-DPI screens, and too large at their autodetected
>     133-DPI screens.

That can be the result of 2 things:
- Actual DPI not being correctly detected by X, but I really doubt it.
- Bad user feedback. Users have been used to badly set DPIs, leading to
  several different things. One of which is the following: 10pt font at
  133dpi, yes, is smaller than 10pt at 100dpi on the same screen at the
  same resolution. And 10pt font at 80dpi, yes, is smaller than 10pt at
  100dpi on the same screen at the same resolution. Coming back to my
  own bad habits case, with having 75dpi on a 15" at a resolution of
  1400x1050 , I got used to *small* fonts. *Everybody*, when looking at
  my screen, told me "isn't it too small" ? And I usually answered "no,
  that's fine".
  Now I'm using a 13.3" screen at 1280x800, with 112dpi and 10pt fonts,
  they are, yes, much much bigger than what I was using before, but
  actually, it's much better now.
  Since then, I reinstalled the 15" laptop (giving a try to Ubuntu at
  the same time ;) ) and set the adequate DPI, set the fonts to 10pt,
  and guess what... it gives me the same size for fonts as the 13.3"
  does, which was what i expected.

>   - Other operating systems do not use the real DPI of the display, and
>     there does not seem to be a strong movement towards having this
>     changed.

Again, it's not because other OS are stupid that we have to do the same.

Mike