From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 24 14:06:49 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9ADC216A41F for ; Wed, 24 Aug 2005 14:06:49 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from will+freebsd-current@will.iki.fi) Received: from will.iki.fi (will.iki.fi [217.169.64.20]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 29C4043D46 for ; Wed, 24 Aug 2005 14:06:49 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from will+freebsd-current@will.iki.fi) Received: from [10.0.20.56] (fa-3-0-0.fw.exomi.com [217.169.64.99]) by will.iki.fi (Postfix) with ESMTP id A3D84D4; Wed, 24 Aug 2005 17:06:47 +0300 (EEST) Message-ID: <430C7EF4.2060406@will.iki.fi> Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 17:06:44 +0300 From: Ville-Pertti Keinonen User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (X11/20050721) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Daniel O'Connor References: <20050823124028.GA67999@pcwin002.win.tue.nl> <009e01c5a825$47e84d70$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca> <20050823212613.GB27233@raqdevil.offmyserver.com> <200508241028.07530.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> In-Reply-To: <200508241028.07530.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Andrew Gallatin , Andreas Hauser , "Devon H. O'Dell" , freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Matt Emmerton , Eric Anderson Subject: Re: fontsize and dpi (was Re: Beta2: Nice job!) X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 14:06:49 -0000 Daniel O'Connor wrote: > You really shouldn't change your DPI as a way of modifying your font size.. Sometimes that's the only way of getting the font sizes you want. As long as the DPIs of displays are relatively low, pixel size is extremely relevant to the shape and legibility of fonts, yet font sizes can usually only be specified as integer points. This causes problems, e.g. at the true DPI (116) of my laptop display, a font I want to use looks good at a pixel size of 12, but most programs don't let me select that size because the point size is somewhere between 7 and 8 (7.5 works in the few programs that allow it). In effect, the set of available font shapes is restricted by the DPI. I'd prefer to specify font sizes in pixels for UI fonts (like I did back when X11 programs used traditional X11 font specifications). The only parts of an UI I want to be DPI-sensitive are ones that display things with off-screen physical representations. Obviously this isn't a FreeBSD problem, but it's not really even an X11 or fontconfig problem, it's a problem with UI libraries and apps not letting the user specify fontconfig parameters properly (the size parameters are actually floating point values, and size can be specified as points or pixels).