high resolutionn/tiny fonts

[Felix Miata]

Bill Vance composed on 2014-11-08 01:51 (UTC-0800):

> Felix Miata wrote:

>> My Sempron 2800+ motherboard does not have onboard video. Presumably, yours
>> has some sort of NVidia? Which (lspci | grep VGA output)?

'lspci | grep VGA output' is a command to run in Konsole or other terminal or
on a vtty.

>> Exactly what resolution is it using? With what brand/model/size display? What
>> does
>> http://web.archive.org/web/20140806165951/http://fm.no-ip.com/Auth/dpi-screen-window.html
>> or http://fm.no-ip.com/Auth/dpi-screen-window.html report for DPI and
>> resolution?

Load one of those pages in Konq, SeaMonkey or Firefox (not Chrome or
Chromium, and not Konq set to use the WebKit engine). Konq often refuses to
show DPI until after one or more reloads, and needs to be using KHTML instead
of WebKit to work correctly on a screen that is not in fact 96 DPI.

> What is the output from 'xrdb -query | grep dpi', if any? If

That quote is another shell (e.g. Konsole) command.

>> Xft.dpi is set to 96, you need to make it go away, either null, or set to a
>> value that makes your fonts nice size.

If Xft.dpi is set it make take considerable exploring to find out where it is
being set.

>> Which display driver is being used? NVidia proprietary? Nouveau? Other?

That answer shows up in /var/log/Xorg.0.log in the form of many sequential
lines repeating the driver name in caps.

>> 14.04 uses KDE 4.13.3, which uses KScreen instead of KRandr for manipulating
>> video settings. KScreen ignores any attempts to obey any /etc/X11/xorg.conf*
>> settings unless you disable it. I disable it thus via kdedrc:

>> 	[Module-kscreen]
>> 	autoload=false

kdedrc lives in ~/.kde/share/config. To edit it you need to log out of KDE,
then log in on any vtty, then use any text editor, such as nano, mcedit, vi
or joe. Kscreen isn't applicable in 12.04 though.

>> Once you can get xorg.conf to be obeyed you can not only use it to set
>> whatever resolution you want, it can also force DPI to a value matching your
>> screen (via DisplaySize[1]), or higher, which will enlarge everything,
>> including fonts.

>> [1]
>> http://web.archive.org/web/20140819190325/http://fm.no-ip.com/Share/DisplaySize
>> or http://fm.no-ip.com/Share/DisplaySize

That file includes some example content that's valid in an xorg.conf file. To
actually build an xorg.conf file you'll want to find a howto somewhere on
help.ubuntu.com or elsewhere, specific to your video driver if you are using
a proprietary one. For what you'll want to do you'll only need 3 or possibly
4 sections for any FOSS driver:

Section "Device"
Section "Monitor"
Section "Screen"

If you need or want to disable bling globally:
Section "Extensions"

http://fm.no-ip.com/Share/xorg.conf-minimal-force-DPI is a minimalist version
you could work from or tweak to your own needs.

> Thanks for the help, Felix.  I'll save your post for the next
> time I try to install 14.04.  At the moment, I've got 12.04
> installed, so trying some of the above won't provide anything
> useful.

Actually running those commands and loading the web page would offer some
knowledge no matter which release you have installed. And you could try
building custom configuration through xorg.conf just to see how it can work.
It works the same since long before 12.04 and still continues in 14.10. Most
people simply don't need it, since automagic in conjunction with desktop
settings works well enough for most users.

> The rest of your questions sound interesting, but I have no
> idea how/where to find the info.  :-(

Starting point for xorg.conf:
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/X11R6.8.0/doc/xorg.conf.5.html

For more, use the search box in your web browser.
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/