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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: [Kde-accessibility] Re: KDE screen resolution policy
From:       "Luke Chatburn" <luke () linuxcomment ! com>
Date:       2004-01-02 18:14:49
Message-ID: 001001c3d15c$5019cb50$6501a8c0 () Furies
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It is also worth noting some statistics I saw a few weeks back (I forget the
link, unfortunately :-/ ), that the majority of users (> 95%) are now
running > 800x600.

This is not to say that it is not desirable to accomodate 800x600 by any
means (that's still a lot of users!), but it is rare these days, and 640x480
really is in use by a tiny proportion of the population. Changing point
sizes of text to make it readable at higher resolutions is of more pressing
concern.

While a great many people come onto forums and post to lists such as this
one, complaining that KDE applications don't run as fast as they should on
their P100s, it is worth remembering that such computers are heading toward
the ten year age these days. Moreover, monitors incapable of 800x600 are 10+
years and most 10 year old monitors can do 1024x768 too.

More often than not, monitors only capable of running 800x600 max are
actually from 386s and early 486s, many of which you would never, ever want
to run the KDE (have tried KDE on 386... many cups of tea while loading
:) ).

-Luke

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Frans Englich" <frans.englich@telia.com>
To: "Bill Haneman" <Bill.Haneman@Sun.COM>; <ojschmidt@kde.org>
Cc: <kde-accessibility@mail.kde.org>; <kde-usability@mail.kde.org>
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 5:42 PM
Subject: Re: [Kde-accessibility] Re: KDE screen resolution policy


> On Friday 02 January 2004 14:13, Bill Haneman wrote:
> > Hi, Happy New Year everyone (and an early Happy New Year to those in
> > China :-)
> >
> > I'd like to comment on the 640x400 accessibility issue.  I agree that
> > this is desirable for
> > accessibility, but since 640x480 is getting less and less common,
> > perhaps 800x600 is
> > a better target for now.  A 'virtual' 800x600 (with a physical 640x480),
> > which I believe
> > XFree supports now, may be a good compromise, since it allows
> > applications to write
> > to a somewhat bigger virtual area in which the 640x480 area is panned.
>
> The KDE policy is that individual windows must run in 640x480 and the
whole
> DE/Display in 800x600, so I guess it fullfills your suggestion. For
details,
> see:
>
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/standards/kde/style/basics/windows.html#win_size
>
> >
> > What's possibly even more important is support for larger fonts; 12
> > point isn't usually
> > big enough for users with vison difficulties, unless fullscreen
> > magnification is available
> > (KMag can't do that yet, and even gnome-mag/gnopernicus has a hard time
> > unless you
> > have two framebuffers).
>
>
>
> >
> > I think 18 to 20 point fonts are a reasonable target.  This will
> > (especially in conjunction
> > with 800x600 displays) probably be harder to accommodate than just
> > 640x480, but it's
> > really important.  I would argue that working well with such large fonts
> > is actually more
> > critical to accessibility than working with a limited screen resolution.
>
> It would not surprise if that was correct. In either case readability is
an
> important issue. One thing I've noticed especially is the date in the
clock
> applet - by default it is in 8pts which is way to small for most users
IMHO.
> I will soon suggest a larger font(but that will look ugly) or a removal(do
> not show date as default). It has an estethic advantage too, it looks
> cleaner.
> Perhaps there should be a minimum font size for text which is used for
> viewing.
>
>
> Frans
>
> _______________________________________________
> kde-usability mailing list
> kde-usability@mail.kde.org
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability
>

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