Documentation?

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On 04/09/2009 10:55 AM, Jim Gettys wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 10:48 -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
>> On 04/09/2009 10:37 AM, Alan Cox wrote:
>>
>>> In the perfect world the monitor would report the DPI reliably to the
>>> Xserver which would adopt it and everything would just work.
>>> Unfortunately monitors report rather varied things, the dominant OS
>>> product appears to ignore the monitor value entirely (so the monitor
>>> doesn't get corrected) and everyone forces an OS dependant DPI in their
>>> desktop ignoring all the monitor info.
>> All we want is a community call to gather HAL .fdi info for all common display
>> devices...
>>
>
> Again, this isn't sufficient; you also have to know the (typical)
> viewing distance of the screen.
>
> Any such call should be made in such a way we get enough information to
> actually be useful....  DPI itself isn't enough...  We need two pieces
> of information, one of which is a nice simple number, the second of
> which is at best an approximation.  But without the second, the first
> isn't very useful.

Right.  We discussed this all in detail a few months ago...
Either ask for device-type (handheld, monitor, TV, projector, ...), or simply 
ask for dimension-divided-by-typical-distance.

behdad


>                            - Jim