GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 151816
Default GNOME install breaks DPI settings
Last modified: 2005-07-14 18:14:43 UTC
Distribution: Debian 3.1 Package: control-center Severity: critical Version: GNOME2.6.1 unspecified Gnome-Distributor: Debian Synopsis: Default GNOME install breaks DPI settings Bugzilla-Product: control-center Bugzilla-Component: font properties Bugzilla-Version: unspecified Description: Description of Problem: Default GNOME install sets DPI to 96 dpi. This is a major design flaw. The DPI settings is not a value that can be played with when one wants larger or smaller fonts but an actual physical value that has to be correct in order to have WYSIWYG work. This creates at least 3 major problems: 1. Even if a system has specified correct "DisplaySize" value in XF86Config-4 and therefor has correct, automatically calculated values for DPI, each user has to on their first login with GNOME do an "xdpyinfo" to find out what the DPI settings should be, and thereafter enter the font settings dialogue and correct the value. 2. People that have different horizontal and vertical resolutions can not use GNOME. Common example is users with 17" TFT monitors at 1280x1024, since this is 94.11 dpi horizontal and 100.39 dpi vertical. Since it is not possible to enter different values for horizontal and vertical resolutions, it is simply not possible to use GNOME with such monitors and have WYSIWYG. 3. It is not possible to use GNOME and share home directory on different machines, unless all the screens have the same DPI value. Steps to reproduce the problem: 1. Install GNOME. Actual Results: The settings defaults to 96 DPI. Expected Results: The settings should not be touched, it is the X servers job to know the physical dimensions of the screen. If there is a problem that few people know how to set their display dimensions, GNOME should be completed with an application that assists in doing these settings, not by removing the WYSIWYG feature from X that is one of X:s major features. How often does this happen? Every time. Additional Information: There is a similar bug in OpenOffice.Org, issue 30487. OpenOffice simply ignores the DPI settings. Somewhere down the line, it seems that people so unaware of how X works has started to meddle with design issues they do not understand. ------- Bug moved to this database by unknown@bugzilla.gnome.org 2004-09-04 07:02 ------- Unknown platform unknown. Setting to default platform "Other". Unknown milestone "unknown" in product "control-center". Setting to default milestone for this product, '---' The original reporter of this bug does not have an account here. Reassigning to the person who moved it here, unknown@bugzilla.gnome.org. Previous reporter was calle@gosig.nu. Setting to default status "UNCONFIRMED". Setting qa contact to the default for this product. This bug either had no qa contact or an invalid one.
is that a duplicate of #104341 ?
This is readily demonstrable if you have a high resolution laptop display. Mine is 1920x1200 in 15.1" - ie 147x145 DPI as reported by X.Org. If I run gnome-control-centre (normally I use KDE but occasionally I need to edit GNOME prefs) all my newly launched KDE apps will have tiny fonts because they think the display is 50% coarser than it really is.. I haven't found a way to change the DPI settings back to their original values without restarting X either :(
I have exactly the same problem as Daniel O'Connor. I have the same size display with the same DPI and the same headaches getting Gnome apps to look right, and to not make KDE apps look terrible. This bug is more than a year old...see #104341. of which this is essentially a duplicate. Please, please fix it.
Most of this is already covered in bug 10431, but just to respond: > 2. People that have different horizontal and vertical resolutions can > not use GNOME. Common example is users with 17" TFT monitors at > 1280x1024, since this is 94.11 dpi horizontal and 100.39 dpi vertical. > Since it is not possible to enter different values for horizontal and > vertical resolutions, it is simply not possible to use GNOME with such - 17" TFT monitors actually have square pixels - they are 5x4 not 4x3. Take a ruler to your monitor. - No parts of modern fontconfig/Xft font system support non-square pixels, so it wouldn't be fixable anyways. For "within KDE" - apps are supposed to pick up the settings from the environment. The fact that running gnome-control-center things from KDE gnome-settings-daemon is a pretty major bug, but not a bug with the font-properties dialog. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 104341 ***