Re: [OT font resolution -- was Re: [Devel] TrueType font-scaling]

[Vincent Caron]

On Mon, 2002-08-05 at 23:41, Pavel Kankovsky wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Aug 2002, Keith Packard wrote:
> 
> > I'm actually quite tempted to fix the Xft resolution to 96dpi unless 
> > reconfigured by the user.  It's clear that using 96dpi is better than 
> > using the "actual" display DPI.
> 
> Perhaps we should stop calling the value "dpi" because it is not supposed
> to have any relation to (real) inches anymore?
> 
> > Anyone have a reason to consider using the "real" display DPI?

Just my 2 cents. I believe MS actually pervertered the original meaning.
Everybody now considers this 'dpi value' as being the 'global font
scale'. Should we make the same mistake ? Mac users are often proud of
the rightness of their platform towards gamma and resolution
calibration. It would be a shame to discard the whole display resolution
concept which just became a reality now that good quality monitors send
true DPI values via DDC.

My expectation would that X sends device-tied values (even if they were
actually hardcoded in XF86Config), so we could say : OK, this is the
hardware resolution of my display device, this is what I expect.

Now we would set two parameters :

 - dependent/indepedent font resolution (from the device resolution)
 - font 'virtual' resolution, or ratio from 96dpi

Thus people wanting a serious PAO platform will get the 'real thing',
while normal users will have something like '100% : normal font size',
'125% : big fonts', etc + a checkbox 'Use monitor resolution' (hidden in
a 'Advanced' tab like a certain OS likes to do :)).