While a great leap forward, the new font properties selector is very flawed
in its use of a static dpi value.

I do understand some people like to get the 96dpi of windows, but this only
hardcodes windows font braindamage (ie any screen with a dpi different from
what windows expects looks like shit). Xft is not a reason to drop the high
dpi settings people had come to enjoy under Linux. (Plus it forces X setup
on the user even though all users of a given system share the same hardware
resolution.)

XFree86 actually has got for quite a long time a good dpi detection
routine, which works out of the box on most mogern DDC graphic cards (and
for older cards teaching X the real screen size is not hard at all). Gnome
should just query X for the real dpi value and use it, like for example the
Gimp.

This is especially important in nfs-home setups where stations may have
different dpi values. Using a fixed dpi value in user prefs just does not
cut it. The alternative of changing it evey time one logs in is plain
annoying. And most people do no have a clue of what their screen resolution is.

With decent fonts (like those on sf) one should never have the need to
correct the value X detects. The ability to override it should be optional,
not forced on the user like right now.

The current setup won't help getting Gnome font support out of the dark
ages in the long run. It's nothing more than a clever hack. (the rest of
the font setup on the other hand is great)