screen physical size, DPI, font size - how does it work?

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le dimanche 07 octobre 2007 à 16:04 +0200, Alexej Davidov a écrit :

> Ah, OK. Anyway, it seems that it is not desirable to set the
> theoretically correct dpi value,

It is highly desirable. Most of the text rendering artefacts you see are
due to lack of pixel density, to the higher the pixel density the better

>  as then the fonts get awfully big. I
> don't understand the rational behind this, though.

That's just terminally broken apps that assume screens will stay stuck
at 96dpi till the end of time. Since there are limits to physical screen
sizes, after a while manufacturers compete on pixel density so that
assumption is broken.

Correct physical dpi use means the higher the pixel density the sharper
the fonts. But font size itself does not change with density (like it
does not change when you move from a 600dpi to a 1200dpi printer)

However when you lie to your libraries about dpi you have a zooming
effect. So since your dpi value was misconfigured before, fonts had not
their real size. Now it's fixed the size changed to the real value, but
you have to fix the font settings you chose before based on the false
font sizes your previous misconfiguration generated.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot
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