Re: [Devel] TrueType font-scaling

[Ole André Vadla Ravnås]

On Sat, 2002-08-03 at 16:50, Vincent Caron wrote:
> On Sat, 2002-08-03 at 14:02, Ole André Vadla Ravnås wrote:
> > 
> > Ah, I see. Thanks! By the way -- another stupid question while I'm at it
> > :)) Why are the same TrueType-fonts a lot bigger in my Linux environment
> > than in Windows? Size 7 in Windows equals size 9 in my Linux environment
> > it seems.
> 
> Most of the time font sizes are specified in points (a point is 1/72
> inch or 0.035mm), not in pixels. It means that the resulting size in
> pixels depends on your screen resolution. The screen resolution is
> actually arbitralily set up by the OS. Windows let you choose the
> resolution in the 'Display Properties/Settings' panel, 'Advanced'
> button, where you select so-called 'big fonts', 'normal fonts' and so
> on. You'll notice somehting that says 'Normal size (96 dpi)', which is
> the default resolution of the screen under Windows. Try the 'other'
> option, it brings up an interactive dialog that shows the relation
> between font visual size and resolution.

Ah, I see. That makes sense.

> It turns out that some Linux distro configure X with a 100dpi
> resolution. This makes font slightly larger than the Windows ones for
> the same point size. You can check your X resolution with 'xdpyinfo|grep
> resolution'.

Ok, very well.

> BTW, your two last sentences contradict each other :). It the last one
> is true (7pt Windows = 9pt Linux), you are maybe running the other
> popular XFree resolution which is 75dpi. Then you would say that for the
> same point size, Linux fonts are much smaller than their Windows
> counterpart.

Hehe, you're right about that. :)) Too much caffeine and too little
sleep is not always the best combo I guess ;-). The first statement was
supposed to say "smaller" instead of "bigger" -- the TTF-fonts displayed
in Linux are smaller than their Windows counterparts in the same size.
:)

> Note that it is a very common pb for the web : too many people specify
> absolute font sizes in points (the default HTML unit) when they actually
> mean pixels, which leads to broken or illegible layouts on non-96dpi
> platforms.

Exactly. That's what got me started on this in the first place, as some
fonts were looking really ugly in point-size 8, but 9 was fine.

Regards
Ole André