Star Resolution Independence Coming to GTK+
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 7th Aug 2008 13:48 UTC, submitted by jcornuz
GTK+ Red Hat's David Zeuthen blogged today about the huge patch he submitted to GTK+ that will allow the toolkit to achieve resolution independence - widget and font size adapting to your screen's real estate; no more tiny application lost in the corner of your high resolution screen. Although more work is obviously required, Zeuthen's idea is to use RI as the hot-new-feature selling point of the upcoming 3.0 GTK+ release. Discussion is going on in the gtk-devel mailing list and there is an ogg video of the feature in action.
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RE[4]: Resolution independence
by nutshell42 on Fri 8th Aug 2008 21:29 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Resolution independence"
nutshell42
Member since:
2006-01-12

That is really poor resolution for such a large monitor.


a) It's the best compromise between size and crispness. I wouldn't want to know how all those tiny fonts web pages are so fond of look in higher resolutions

b) It's the highest resolution that allows 100Hz. I'm sensitive to flicker and probably the only person in the world who notices the difference between 85Hz and 100Hz



and most web pages have by default ridiculously small text.


Something is very wrong. You shouldn't have any problems with small text unless you're running really high resolutions, which you aren't.


There are quite a few pages out there that use 0.7em and less or happily ignore your chosen font size altogether.

In any case, if the DPI of your display is set properly, font size won't be a problem. Remember that pt is a physical size. So 8pt font size should be the same physical size on any screen if it is set up correctly.


Unfortunately all kinds of things start to break in unexpected ways when you play around with DPI on Windows (e.g. buttons on .Net apps vanish, etc.), while Linux distros make it a game of hide and seek (Ubuntu sets a fixed dpi in the xserverrc, something that was done in Debian ironically enough to fix the problem of too-small fonts)

You can force override that in any browser.


I do. Unfortunately it breaks the layout on a lot of pages.

Most webpages choose reasonable fonts though.


Most people don't steal. I nevertheless lock my door because those that do ruin it for everybody else. The same with web pages.

Your DPI is incorrect. In X, set the DisplaySize to the physical dimensions of your monitor (google for more info on how to do that).


That was Windows. I've written above why I don't change the dpi value there. In X the font sizes have more reasonable numbers, after I've searched my way through 4 config files to allow that DisplaySize value to actually work (aside from the xserverrc Nvidia also had a setting that by default overrode your chosen values). So it's not like Linux makes changing your DPI to the correct value easy. Beware of the Leopard.


Either that, or use FF3/Opera and use full page zoom to get bigger font sizes without breaking layouts.


But then I have to scroll sideways. What I want is a Firefox extension that pretends I'm on a 1024x768 display, layouts the page accordingly, then scales everything to 1280x1024 (refresh rate, remember? =) or 1600x1280 or whatever and renders the fonts at the final size.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

google_ninja Member since:
2006-02-05

i run at 1440x900 on a 17" widescreen monitor which is a higher resolution for a smaller monitor, and I have no problems whatsoever with font size on XP, Vista, or Linux with the default settings. As the original poster said, something is very wrong with your settings.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

nutshell42 Member since:
2006-01-12

As the original poster said, something is very wrong with your settings.


And something is very wrong with your eyes, because you can't read what I wrote. Thus proving that your fonts are set too small and you've gone blind.

Once again, in caps, so that those who don't adjust their settings can read it too:
I CAN READ TEXT THAT SMALL.

I JUST DON'T WANT TO.

BUT CRAPPY WEB DESIGNERS KEEP ME FROM ADJUSTING THE FONTS WITHOUT BREAKING PAGES AND CRAPPY APPS KEEP ME FROM ADJUSTING THE DPI.

Apart from that 17" at 1440x900 probably means you're using a notebook and are a lot closer to the screen and text's effectively larger for you than it is for me.


Also, apparently none of you bothered to read the blog entry (probably because your fonts are too tiny):
Got one of them big laptops where you feel tempted to use a looking glass because the pixels are so tiny? Ever feel cheated when you adjust the font size but the rest of the UI looks like crap in comparison? Or maybe ever felt dirty when hard coding pixel values in your application?


It's not like I'm the only one who's noticed the problem. If gtk implements a way to get around the two broken clutches mentioned above, more power to them.


Soap Box:
Honestly this whole "what's wrong with you?" attitude permeates many open source projects (e.g. Debian, at least some time ago) and there's hardly anything more frustrating, condescending and infuriating. In fact it's one major reason I'm back to mostly Windows instead of mostly Linux (and I've used Linux since 94 -SuSE 11/94 IIRC- and as my main OS from 98 until 2005)

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2