B. Stia wrote:
On Sunday 13 November 2005 01:27 am, Felix Miata wrote:
B. Stia wrote:
I have a 21" tft lcd that runs 1600x1200 and kinfocenter says the dpi is 75x75. And the physical dimensions are 542x406 mm's, (that doesn't seem right?)
Are you running 8.2 or something older? 542x406 does not compute for any 21" display I can imagine.
No, I am running 9.2 with all of the latest updates.
Then xfs is somehow using a traditional 75 dpi without regard to the hardware you are using. This seems to be the legacy dumbness that Debian systems and the remaining apps using xfs cling to. Overstated screen dimensions from xdpyinfo are the expected result of an artificially low DPI.
Your page shows my dpi should be 96. (and yes the measure is 1") What is correct?
You don't say which page. http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/dpi.html shows that Kinfocenter seems to be lying.
Hmmm... Lying?? Kinfocenter is also where I got the 542x406 dimensions from.
Yes, lying, at least insofar as Firefox is concerned. Kinfocenter gets its info from the old xfs font system via the xdpyinfo utility, which as I wrote below/earlier is not necessarily the only DPI an X app can find, and not the one Firefox uses.
http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/dpi-screen-window.html reports what xft/fontconfig tells it from (document.getElementById("inches").offsetWidth) (if using an XFT build of Mozilla and JS is enabled), unless you have used Mozilla pref browser.display.screen_resolution to override it.
Yes, this is the page where the 1" bar displays correctly. Are you saying that these pages interact with my display? or are they strictly informational?
Informational.
Not sure what you mean by an XFT build of Firefox but is the original SuSE 9.2 64 bit version updated with apt from SuSE. About:config reports the screen as default.
SuSE RPMs of Mozilla apps for 9.2 use XFT. You can see this as a build configuration option in about:buildconfig. About:config will report only one thing for "screen", browser.display.screen_resolution, which will be 0 (to use what the environment tells it to) unless you override it yourself.
There also doesn't seem to be a way in SAX to change the dpi, only refresh rates and resolution.
I so rarely use SAX for anything, I can't begin to guess what it should or should not be able to do. I hand tune /etc/X11/xorg.conf and if necessary /etc/X11/Xresources to achieve desired DPI results. Normally I set to a multiple of 12, which seems to minimize anomolies in font size renderings when web pages size text in pt. One pt is 1/72".
I have looked at the "monitor" section of xorg.conf and XF86.config several times. I don't see anyway to set the dpi there.
It isn't done directly. It's done via a "DisplaySize" entry. That requires math. The DPI is computed from your screen dimensions and resolution.
A Linux desktop won't necessarily have a single DPI. Kinfocenter gets its info from xdpyinfo, which reports what xfs believes the DPI to be. XFT versions of Mozilla will report the DPI that xft/fontconfig believe it to be. Without an entry 'DisplaySize' in 'Section "Monitor"' I find typically these will not match.
What is xfs?
The X Window System font server, which is the legacy X font system. Newer apps use a modern and still evolving font server that goes by two names, fontconfig, and freetype (xft). Any modern app built with an XFT option is using fontconfig instead of xfs to get fonts - e.g. Firefox.
and what makes it believe the dpi to be something?
I have no idea of the xfs dpi machinations, only to configure it via DisplaySize.
Running any recent SuSE you can typically force the two to match whatever DPI you wish to have, accurate or not, by creating a DisplaySize entry in xorg.conf or XF86Config or XF86Config-4 as applicable to your system.
I hesitate to add anything because I really don't know what I am doing or exactly what to add there in with those files and it says "Do not edit" at the top.
YaST puts that "do not edit" there. You must edit to get certain things in there that YaST won't put there, like DisplaySize. YaST thinks your display and font servers sort it out amongst themselves, which sometimes they do OK, and other times not.
If you find this fails to create a match, add or uncomment an entry "Xft.dpi: 96" (or whatever DPI you desire) in Xresources.
Couldn't find an entry like that in xresources
If you want one there and there isn't one there you must put it there. That's why I wrote "add". It's not the place to start. Do xorg.confg/XF86Config first.
You can pick a DisplaySize/DPI combination from http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/Cfg/displaySize if you wish.
OK looked at that. Lots of choices. Where would I enter that info?
Look at the top of the list and you'll see the section header it must follow. Give this one a try: DisplaySize 420 315 # 096 DPI @ 1600x1200 note everything on a line after an # is a comment, and thus not necessary to get the job done. You can paste that whole (section of the) list into your config file, then uncomment only the one line you want to use.
If this too fails, you're most likely starting X with a '-dpi 75' parameter via some script or config file somewhere in the /etc tree.
Oh boy, that would be a lot of fun trying to do that. Could one of the cli gurus come up with a command for that?....
One way to do it would be like: startx -- -dpi 75 (see http://www.mozilla.org/unix/dpi.html). You would substitute 96 or 100 for 75.
...And, how does one fix the actual screen dimensions to the proper value?
DisplaySize in xorg.conf or XF86Config. Theoretically, X should be figuring it out on its own, but I don't think it's any good at it with large displays and high resolution.
Or should I just not worry about it and kludge along?
If you like teeny fonts, don't do anything. -- "I can do all things through Him who gives me strength." Philippians 4:13 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/