[Bug 118745] Re: Font sizes in Gutsy are vulnerable to bad X.org DPI detection

[Nick_Hill]

As an update to my suggestion to have the DPI settable in a Gnome
interface,

I suggest replacing the DPI drop-down box that I previously suggested,
with a screen size drop-down box. And add two fields for width and
height. If anything other than user defined is selected, the width and
height boxes are greyed/inactive and display the current auto-detected
width and height, or the width and height associated with the option
manually selected. If "User Defined" is selected, the width and height
boxes are black, activated and editable. User can change those values to
any sensible value.

I'd suggest
AutoDetect
12"
14"
14" widescreen
15"
15" widescreen
17" 
17" widescreen
19"
19" widescreen
User Defined

How do we handle situations where the user has not selected either a
resolution or screen size, and no detection information is available?

Normally, we would want to assume the user is using the most common
screen size of the day which is 17”.

We need to consider whether this would work when a user is trying to
install a system using a 'fall-back' resolution such as 640x480 or
800x600 whether or not screen size info is available.

We are faced with several competing factors:
1)Will the font sizes be readable with default settings?
2)Will the system be installable with default settings?
3)Will the screen be set to the “correct” size?

I suggest that when we are set to a fall-back resolution, 3 doesn't
matter. Readability and installability are the prime factors. The user
can set his or her preferences later, once installed.

We also need to ensure the ubiquity installer is usable with fall-back
resolutions, at least, 800x600. I therefore suggest that if the screen
resolution detected via DDC is 800x600 or less, we should ignore the
screen size reported by DDC if less than 14” and assume 14”. (We don't
want high DPI values at 800x600 resolution as this will often lead to
the ubiquity application window growing too large for the screen, and
other applications growing ungainly).

I have made a flowchart which demonstrates logical steps to end up with
a resolution, refresh rate and screen size from xorg.conf, gnome
settings and DDC as outlined above.

** Attachment added: "screen_res_flowchart.png"
   http://launchpadlibrarian.net/8329646/screen_res_flowchart.png

-- 
Font sizes in Gutsy are vulnerable to bad X.org DPI detection
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/118745
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