Default font size in gnome

[Chris Cheney]

On Thu, 2009-02-26 at 21:08 -0500, Felix Miata wrote:
> On 2009/02/26 19:15 (GMT-0600) Chris Cheney composed:
> 
> >> On 26/02/09 14:31, Felix Miata wrote:
> 
> >> Real-world DPI has been steadily increasing from release to 
> >> release.
> 
> > I don't see this to actually be the case. Even with laptops it seems
> > that ~ 130 dpi is the maximum that most manufacturers are doing. I had a
> 
> It wasn't that long ago that they switched from 4:3 to widescreen. Before
> that point, it was mostly 15" on 1024x768 (85 DPI), 17" on 1280x1024 (96 DPI)
> & 19" on 1280x1024 (86 DPI) taking over from a lower average on CRTs. There's
> still a lot of those in use. They mostly aren't replaced or soon to be
> replaced yet.

The switch to widescreen in laptops happened over 5 years ago. Even back
with 4:3 on laptops you could get 133 dpi screens (1600x1200 15" laptop)
5+ years ago. So I still don't see a continual increase in dpi. I see an
increase in dpi to about the maximal usable with the fact that Windows
doesn't scale properly to higher dpi and then stagnation in the field.
IBM had made 200 dpi screens around 5 years ago but they have been EOL'd
since Windows still isn't resolution independent. 

> > laptop about 5 years ago that was 133 dpi and even today it is hard to
> > find laptops with higher than 133 dpi screens. Even most netbooks with
> > their tiny screens are below 130 dpi.
> 
> Overall the manufacturers are no dummies. They seem to know how poor is
> support for higher in available desktop environments. Support for 120 DPI in
> WinXP is poor, for higher, terrible. I've not heard that it has improved
> significantly in Vista. Poorer performance from more expensive products does
> not well generate sales and minimize returns. Manufacturers could be
> providing higher if poor support wasn't the norm for the foreseeable future.
> 1920x1200 on 15.4" proves 140+ technology already exists that could be
> provided in desktop displays. If and when real resolution independence
> happens, DPI will go up faster.

Agreed and as Windows doesn't seem to actually be moving in the
resolution independent direction, at least anytime soon, due to backward
compatibility with third party apps. So I don't think dpi is going to
increase significantly more any time soon as Ryan seemed to think.

Here are some interesting articles about High DPI from the Microsoft
perspective.

http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/archive/2006/08/07/690704.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/09/13/follow-up-on-high-dpi-resolution.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/09/16/more-follow-up-to-discussion-about-high-dpi.aspx


> http://fm.no-ip.com/auth/Font/fonts-pt2px-tabled.html shows a bit about
> results of common pixel font sizes in context of the display population. Note
> at at 96 DPI, 16px is 12pt, 14px is one size larger than 10pt, and 12px is
> 9pt, while at 120 DPI, 16px is commonly the size used to render 10pt
> (16.667px to be somewhat precise in actuality).
> -- 
> "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your
> mouths, but only what is helpful for building
> others up."			Ephesians 4:29 NIV
> 
>  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409
> 
> Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/