KDE&dpi: resolution change => fonts too small

Message

nabla² · Post by **nabla²** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 5:45 pm

Hi,

to use a video projector, I have to reduce my resolution temporarly from 1400x1050 to lets say 800x600 in KDE. The problem is that most of the fonts of newly opened apps are too small then, almost not readable. They are small even after changing back to 1400x1050.

I searched a bit and found topics concerning dpi and DisplaySize in xorg.conf. So I set my DisplaySize and watched for the dpi value:
1400x1050: 116x116
800x600: 66x66

I'm confused... Anything else too set? A bug or a feature? Actually, I would suppose that the fonts would actually become bigger when having a lower resolution.

thx

EDIT: changed beamer to video projector

mickwd · Post by **mickwd** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:16 pm

I'm not quite sure what your problem is, or what you mean when you say "to use a beamer", but I had a similar problem when upgrading ati-drivers for my ATI card and moving to KDE 3.5.3.

I've got a 15.4 inch 1680x1050 widescreen display. I ended up setting the following in the "Monitor" section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf, which made the fonts a useable size again:

DisplaySize 420 262

This corresponds to about 100x100dpi (whereas in reality my screen is about 128x128dpi), but increases the size of the fonts to something more useable.

nabla² · Post by **nabla²** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:36 pm

mickwd wrote:I'm not quite sure what your problem is, or what you mean when you say "to use a beamer", but I had a similar problem when upgrading ati-drivers for my ATI card and moving to KDE 3.5.3.

I've got a 15.4 inch 1680x1050 widescreen display. I ended up setting the following in the "Monitor" section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf, which made the fonts a useable size again:
DisplaySize 420 262
This corresponds to about 100x100dpi (whereas in reality my screen is about 128x128dpi), but increases the size of the fonts to something more useable.

Oh, sry. I quote

wikipedia wrote:Beamer: Video projector, a pseudo-anglicism in a number of languages including German and Dutch.

So I suppose beamer is actually not used for video projector in English.

I think most of the video projectors don't support 1400x1050, thatswhy the resolution change (which is only temporal, only for presentation). So a change of xorg.conf is not a good way for me. In addition, if I understand it correctly, the DisplaySize should really be the real physical size of your display, not any other value do get another dpi. There is the possibility to start the x server with a dpi number or to change the font size. The latter must only be done once and will be ok if one do not change the resolution...
Tomorrow, I will do some screenshots to make my problem visible...

Thx

nabla² · Post by **nabla²** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 11:13 am

Before changing resolution. Here everything is fine... The problem is that the program must not be opened before resolution change to show the problem. Thatswhy I had to log out and log in. Then I changed the resolution, opened Konqueror and thats the screen shot: after resolution change. The fonts are almost not readable. Bug, feature?

nabla² · Post by **nabla²** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 5:12 pm

bump, thx

nabla² · Post by **nabla²** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:28 pm

szensz-siempre · Post by **szensz-siempre** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 10:17 am

Although this post is dead, I thought I would just add something in case someone else comes across a similar problem and can't find an answer.

You can specify the DPI setting, which changes the size of your fonts, in the scree section of xorg.conf:

Option "DPI" "100 x 100"