Resolution indpendence

[Steven J Newbury]

On Fri, 2008-06-27 at 16:10 +0200, Eirik Byrkjeflot Anonsen wrote:
> 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.
I suspect you may not represent the majority you *think* you do.  I know
a great many people who run their systems (with LCD display hardware) at
under resolution because they do not want a large screen area with tiny
elements.  The scaling hardware in the LCD gives them the "resolution
independence" they need, but we can (and should) do so much better!