[OT font resolution -- was Re: [Devel] TrueType font-scaling]

[Joaquin Cuenca Abela]

Owen wrote:
>
> Vadim Plessky <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > |  OK, I think I need to alias address@hidden to
> > |  foot-in-mouth-list ;-), seem to always make mistakes when posting
> > |  here... I (for some reason) thought I was replying to a post
> > |  about the current Red Hat beta, which does behave as above.
> > |
> > |  Most Linux setups will either use the physical screen resolution
> > |  (for Xft) or a fixed value of 75 or 100dpi (for rendering via the
> > |  core  X protocol)
> >
> > Hi Owen!
> >
> > AFAIK several graphics adapters supported under XFree86 (ATI and Matrox,
in
> > particular) can auto-detect dpi during initialization / X startup.
> > So, there is no need to pre-define 96dpi if user has modern graphics
adapter.
>
> A) It's very hard to tell _if_ the resolution was probed successfully,
[snip]
> C) Unless padding and graphics scale along with the text, large
>    changes in the DPI used will destroy layouts.

Amen.  In AbiWord we hardcoded a resolution of 96dpi to get at least a
decent resolution, but if in the next redhat, users are going to have an
easy way to choose the "resolution" that should be used for fonts, I will
like to know how to read it.

Are we going to pick the right value if we just leave the dpi parameter
unspecified in the pattern that we pass to fontconfig?

Cheers,