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List:       kde-bugs-dist
Subject:    Bug#35119: Font size depends on X server DPI value
From:       David Faure <david () mandrakesoft ! com>
Date:       2001-11-30 20:04:13
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On Friday 30 November 2001 19:50, you wrote:
> Some further updates, after talking with Keith Packard about font sizes..

The man who knows everything about fonts ;)

> The XFT truetype engine will only use the X server DPI value if there is
> no specific X resource for Xft.dpi.
>
> So you can actually more easily test out different DPI values by just
> changing that value in your .Xdefaults file, and re-doing
> 
> 	.. change .Xdefaults to have ..
> 	Xft.dpi=300
> 	xrdb -merge .Xdefaults

Interesting.
Or simply 
echo 'Xft.dpi:300' | xrdb -merge

> which makes testing a lot easier (no need to re-start the X server, and
> your desktop can look sane while you test other values of the dpi
> setting).
Right, but...... see below.

> While testing this, I actually seem to have found another bug: starting
> off with a DPI of 75, and then doing the above with a DPI setting of 300,
> and trying to just start kword, kword will silently just exit with no
> error message and no window ever popping up. Changing the DPI back to 75
> makes kword happy again..
Seems to be a KWordWrap bug, it goes into an infinite loop here - unrelated
 to DPI, but triggered by those different font metrics. Currently fixing.
Not really the same thing as exiting immediately though... Strange.

> Maybe kword gets upset when Xft uses a DPI value of 300, while the X
> server DPI query returns 75. Basically kword should only care about the
> Xft-reported size, methinks.

I can't agree here.
First, KWord isn't tied to Xft. KWord also works even if Xft isn't present.
Qt has code for handling both Xft and the normal Xlib case, if Xft isn't there.
Also, I don't see why the user should have to set the Xft DPI resource,
instead of parametring his X server correctly, if necessary.

I will get back to you about your previous mail, I haven't had time to investigate
the remaining bugs yet, the Javascript support in konqueror kept me busy.

However, I would like to point you to this page, about the question "why honour
the DPI setting at all, i.e. why care about the size of things on screen".
Please check the last paragraph from:
 http://www.freetype.org/freetype2/docs/glyphs/glyphs-5.html
It seems quite important for some people to have real-size paper and fonts on screen.
My take was that, for the ones who don't care about it, it's no problem if it matches
the real size of things or not, so by respecting the X server DPI value I assumed
everyone would be happy, those who care about it and those who don't ;-)

-- 
David FAURE, david@mandrakesoft.com, faure@kde.org
http://perso.mandrakesoft.com/~david/ , http://www.konqueror.org/
KDE 3.0: Konquering the Desktops

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