Resolution indpendence

[Eirik Byrkjeflot Anonsen]

Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com> writes:

> Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>
>> >> The upcoming GNOME will simply set it to 96.
>> >
>> > SRSLY?  That would be a regression.  Right now GNOME nicely detects my
>> > 114dpi screen and uses right size fonts.  96 would look really small.
>> 
>> +1
>> 
>> 1. Exposing correct DPI is hard
[...]
>> but is necessary for correct text rendering,
>
> I take issue with that. I know that a lot of people are emotionally
> invested in this being true, but I've been forcing X to 75dpi from the
> first day that it attempted to use the physical resolution, and it has
> never caused me any problems (whereas using the physical resolution
> certainly has caused problems).

Depends on the meaning of "correct".  Correct rendering (text or otherwise)
requires knowledge of the dpi, if "correct" includes forcing specific
real-world sizes.  However...

[...]

> Ultimately, typical monitor resolutions are still too low to ignore
> the pixel grid altogether. If you want to use physical dimensions
> without parts of the UI being illegible due to rasterisation
> artifacts, you have to "supersize" everything so that it's still
> legible on even the lowest-resolution displays, wasting valuable
> screen space on the majority of systems.

Exactly.  With the current monitor resolutions, the interesting "real
world" unit tends to be the pixel.  So my "resolution" is 1
dot-per-pixel, regardless of how many dots-per-inch there are.

I want a high resolution monitor to get more screen real estate, not
to get better edge smoothing.  When we start approaching 300dpi
graphics pipelines, I will probably change my mind, but that's still
pretty far off it seems.

eirik