Coherent Font Sizes (DPI) in Gentoo?

Gatak · Apprentice Joined: 04 Jan 2004 Posts: 174

Recently I tried to solve issues with fonts in applications being rendered at different sizes in Gnome/KDE and plain X. This is a very bad(tm) thing IMHO.

There seem to be a confusion about DPI and monitors that needs to be sorted first.

1) A monitor only has one DPI (dots per inch) per resolution.
2) X uses physical size of the screen to calculate the DPI for current resolution.

But, here it is what it will go wrong. DPI does not belong on screens - only in printing! If applications were to folow X way of doing things then the text (if specified in points, pt) will be the same size in mm on screen no matter what resolution the user runs at.

This will certainly not be what most users want - especially not for web use, or reading documents.

Gnome already uses a default DPI of 96. This is good and coherent with what Windows users use (please do not start Ms vs. Linux flaming) and thus most internet users.

I suggest for Gentoo to adobt the default of 96 dpi for all of X, KDE and Gnome. Using a fixed (of course changable by the user) and default DPI will give a much better experience - especially on the web where almost all webpages are made for viewing on a Windows machine.

What do the rest of you think about this approach? Yes, I know Mozilla allows changing of DPI, but many/most programs do not.

Telep · n00b Joined: 26 Apr 2004 Posts: 3

I'm having exactly the same trouble. Font sizes seem to change completely randomly in KDE, and it's really annoying.
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HP nx7000 Centrino laptop

Artherio · n00b Joined: 09 Jan 2004 Posts: 65

I think you are right. I use KDE, and the fonts in Firefox pissed me off to no end. I couldn't get them the right size no matter what settings I changed. I finally fixed my problem by changing x to use 96x96 DPI. I did this by adding

riverlethe · n00b Joined: 18 May 2004 Posts: 2

What DisplaySize should I use for 1280x1024?

Gatak · Apprentice Joined: 04 Jan 2004 Posts: 174

Just do the math =)

1280/96*25,4 = 339mm
1024/96*25,4 = 271mm

BUT you must realze that 1280x1024 is a NON-SQUARE ratio for _most_ PC monitors. This means that when you draw a circle it really will be oval.

1280x960 is the proper 4:3 ratio. 1280x1024 is 5:4 (1.25:1) which is the same as a PAL TV set.

EDIT: I am a little confused on which to use, a fixed 96dpi, or to use a dpi based on screen size (1280/screensize*25.4). The latter ought to be better, but does not really work if people do not use it correctly.