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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: FEATURE: Forcing DPI setting for fonts
From:       Torsten Rahn <torsten.rahn () credativ ! de>
Date:       2006-08-31 17:13:56
Message-ID: 200608311913.57215.torsten.rahn () credativ ! de
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On 31.08.2006 16:50, Stephan Kulow wrote:
> > From looking at your patch it's looks like you're planning to add this to
> > the generic fonts configuration page. Do we really need to clutter a
> > supposedly easy to understand dialog with some rather obscure setting
> > that is not meant to be used anyways? I'm not even sure whether this
> > stuff belongs to fonts. Because usually you only deal with this if you
> > set up the screen resolution, so it might make more sense to put it there
> > (which MS
> Where do you define your screen resolution? That's nothing to be defined,

I meant the screen-pixel-resolution (i.e. 1024x768) as opposed to the dpi 
resolution. Of course "screen resolution" is a common but misleading term (of 
course it's clear to me that "resolution" isn't quite correct in terms of 
physics but that's a different issue).
So, sorry if that didn't become clear.

> You should define "usability person. As a matter of fact, the number of
> DPIs is only interesting where you configure things as points, which only
> happens at fonts - if you're not working in some very specific environment.

No. I'm not so sure about that (which doesn't mean that I have any preference 
on this item - I just feel that adding options like this one will increase 
clutter in the font settings with something that is only changed once and for 
all - and I'm not fully convinced that putting it into the fonts dialog is 
the right thing). 
People who choose to change their display settings will do that by going into 
the screen settings (display geometry) dialog and will choose something like 
1024x768, 1280x1024 or something else there. _DEPENDING_ on that they might 
decide that having fonts displayed with true pt's as a reference might not be 
what they want exactly.  So they might want to change that

 dpi-font-behaviour. Unfortunately that check/combobox would be available in a 
completely different dialog in "fonts" where it would have be searched and 
found first. 

I guess that's the reason why e.g. Microsoft put the screen pixel resolution 
(i.e. the setting "1024x768") and the font-dpi-resolution into the very same 
dialog. Because usually they belong to the very same common task. And 
changing the dpi's vs the maximum amount of pixels is so much related that it 
does make sense if you argue in terms of tasks / use cases. Given that they 
had that dialog unchanged for years they might have actually have done some 
usability studies on that one so I wouldn't take it lightly. That's why I ask 
to ask our usability people what they think the font-dialog should look like 
and where they would want to  see the dpi-setting.

Of course we have the problem that the screen resolution gets changed by the 
tools of the distributors, so this makes the whole issue even more 
complicated as what is a "common" task under windows might not (always?) 
happen the same way here.

Got the idea why this is problematic?

> You should define "usability person".

someone from our usability team, our usability list, or even ask the people 
taking care of the usability lab at SUSE. 

Torsten
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