https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=372912
User mfabian@novell.com added comment
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=372912#c5
--- Comment #5 from Mike Fabian 2008-03-27 07:18:58 MST ---
Simon Peter> So if I understand you correctly, two 1024x768 screens
Simon Peter> with different physical sizes (in millimeters) are
Simon Peter> expected to produce differently sized fonts (in pixels).
Yes. Different sized in pixels but the same should be the same
in millimiters.
Simon Peter> * Most people would expect a 12pt font to look identical
Simon Peter> in terms of pixels on any screen, *unless* they specify
Simon Peter> manually to use a different resolution.
I think the majority expects a 12pt font to be a reasonable, readable
size and not that it becomes unreadably small on high resolution
displays. Today some notebooks have 120 dpi displays. If you would
use the same number of pixels there as on a big 1024x768 TFT screen,
the fonts on the notebook would be tiny and unreadable.
Simon Peter> * This is especially true for screen designers and for
Simon Peter> people giving on-screen presentations (or screencasts, or
Simon Peter> whatever you can think of).
I don’t think so. Most fonts used today are not bitmap fonts anymore
but scalable fonts and are rendered using anti-aliasing. You don’t
need to care how many pixels are used as long as there are "enough"
pixels used to render the font readable. The physical size of the font
is more important.
Simon Peter> * As far as I know, this is openSUSE specific. I never
Simon Peter> experienced the fonts on these 2 computers to look
Simon Peter> different using e.g., Ubuntu
No, it is not.
Simon Peter> * Other OSes, too, do not assume different screen
Simon Peter> resolutions for the rendering of fonts. For example,
Simon Peter> Windows has a "high resolution" mode too that can be used
Simon Peter> to render fonts larger, but it has to be enabled
Simon Peter> manually.
Of course you could "lie" about your resolution and assume
a resolution of, say, 96 dpi *always*. No matter wether that is
true for your screen or not. Then, the fonts would always use
the same number of pixels at 12pt, but they would *not* be really
12pt high (pt = point is a length unit like millimeters).
This would defeat the whole point of measuring font sizes in pt
you could just as well measure in pixels then.
Measuring in point is fine if the resolution of the display
is "high enough" so that enough pixels are available to render
the font reasonably well. For 12pt I think fonts can be rendered
reasonably well if the resolution is at least 75 dpi. This is true
for almost every monitor, except maybe LCD TV screens which may
be huge but nevertheless have very few pixels leading to resolutions
of less than 40 dpi (See for example bug #373090).
Simon Peter> Knowing about the story behind the calculation of screen
Simon Peter> fonts, I now think this could have been avoided if
Simon Peter> openSUSE always assumed a constand screen dpi resolution,
Simon Peter> in line with the other distros.
I.e. you want to use a wrong dpi resolution, i.e. using 96dpi always,
no matter whether it is true for the screen. That completely
defeats the point of measuring fonts in pt at all.
If you really want to do that, set 96dpi yourself. You can do that by
editing the the DisplaySize variable in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
(see comment #3).
I don’t think this is a good idea though, it will result in
unreadably small fonts on high resolution screens.
Simon Peter> For the record, my two screens have the following properties:
Simon Peter> * 1024x768: 247x185 mm
105 dpi.
Simon Peter> * 1280x1024: 335x270 mm
97 dpi.
Therefore, your default fonts on the 1024x768 display use
some more pixels to end up with the same physical size in
millimiters.
Assuming that the viewing to both screens is about the same,
this is the reasonable thing to do.
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