[gentoo-user] big fonts after Xorg update

[gentoo-user] big fonts after Xorg update

[Thorsten Kampe]

Hi,

I just updated from xorg-server 1.3.0.0-r6 to 1.6. After the upgrade I 
see a lot of applications have now much bigger fonts then they used to 
have (the fonts and font sizes of course are the same - they just appear 
bigger). Examples are KDM, Konsole, most KDE apps (GNOME applications 
seem not to be affected).

The increased fonts looks a bit as when I connect via VNC to the diplay 
manager session (with the Xorg VNC module). I had the same effect 
already when I tried to upgrade to Xorg 1.5 (which was why I had to 
revert back to 1.3).

This is a VMware virtual machine with the VMware tools installed and 
running.

What can I do to avoid the "font increase"?


Thorsten

[gentoo-user] Re: big fonts after Xorg update

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 10/16/2009 02:22 AM, Thorsten Kampe wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just updated from xorg-server 1.3.0.0-r6 to 1.6. After the upgrade I
> see a lot of applications have now much bigger fonts then they used to
> have (the fonts and font sizes of course are the same - they just appear
> bigger). Examples are KDM, Konsole, most KDE apps (GNOME applications
> seem not to be affected).
>
> The increased fonts looks a bit as when I connect via VNC to the diplay
> manager session (with the Xorg VNC module). I had the same effect
> already when I tried to upgrade to Xorg 1.5 (which was why I had to
> revert back to 1.3).
>
> This is a VMware virtual machine with the VMware tools installed and
> running.
>
> What can I do to avoid the "font increase"?

The best thing you can do with VMWare (from my own experiences) is to 
force 96 DPI in /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc.  Find this line:

   ServerArgsLocal=-nolisten tcp

And add "-dpi 96" to it:

   ServerArgsLocal=-nolisten tcp -dpi 96

Restart X.

[gentoo-user] Re: big fonts after Xorg update

[Thorsten Kampe]

* Nikos Chantziaras (Fri, 16 Oct 2009 02:32:21 +0300)
> 
> On 10/16/2009 02:22 AM, Thorsten Kampe wrote:
> >
> > I just updated from xorg-server 1.3.0.0-r6 to 1.6. After the upgrade I
> > see a lot of applications have now much bigger fonts then they used to
> > have (the fonts and font sizes of course are the same - they just appear
> > bigger). Examples are KDM, Konsole, most KDE apps (GNOME applications
> > seem not to be affected).
> >
> > The increased fonts looks a bit as when I connect via VNC to the diplay
> > manager session (with the Xorg VNC module). I had the same effect
> > already when I tried to upgrade to Xorg 1.5 (which was why I had to
> > revert back to 1.3).
> >
> > This is a VMware virtual machine with the VMware tools installed and
> > running.
> >
> > What can I do to avoid the "font increase"?
> 
> The best thing you can do with VMWare (from my own experiences) is to 
> force 96 DPI in /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc.  Find this line:
> 
>    ServerArgsLocal=-nolisten tcp
> 
> And add "-dpi 96" to it:
> 
>    ServerArgsLocal=-nolisten tcp -dpi 96

That was the solution. I checked the resolution before the upgrade with 
"xdpyinfo | grep resolution" (Tip from the German list): 75 dpi. 
Afterwards: 96 dpi. Setting it to 75 solved the issue.

I'd still like to know what exactly changed and if 75 or 96 is the 
"correct" value. Nevertheless, I have Xorg server 1.6 running and it 
looks fine.

Thanks, Thorsten

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: big fonts after Xorg update

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 19 October 2009 22:18:39 Thorsten Kampe wrote:
> I'd still like to know what exactly changed and if 75 or 96 is the 
> "correct" value. Nevertheless, I have Xorg server 1.6 running and it 
> looks fine.
> 

I'd like to know exactly what the "dpi" setting is.

One thing it isn't, is the "dots per inch" of the display device. Or if it is, 
it gets ignored/misinterpretated/abused by enough apps out there to make no 
sense based on what I see on-screen.

The more I look into this, the more convinced I become that it is little more 
than a "scaling factor hint" that apps are free to ignore (and often do)

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: big fonts after Xorg update

[Paul Hartman]

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 3:18 PM, Thorsten Kampe
<thorsten@thorstenkampe.de> wrote:
> * Nikos Chantziaras (Fri, 16 Oct 2009 02:32:21 +0300)
>>
>> On 10/16/2009 02:22 AM, Thorsten Kampe wrote:
>> >
>> > I just updated from xorg-server 1.3.0.0-r6 to 1.6. After the upgrade I
>> > see a lot of applications have now much bigger fonts then they used to
>> > have (the fonts and font sizes of course are the same - they just appear
>> > bigger). Examples are KDM, Konsole, most KDE apps (GNOME applications
>> > seem not to be affected).
>> >
>> > The increased fonts looks a bit as when I connect via VNC to the diplay
>> > manager session (with the Xorg VNC module). I had the same effect
>> > already when I tried to upgrade to Xorg 1.5 (which was why I had to
>> > revert back to 1.3).
>> >
>> > This is a VMware virtual machine with the VMware tools installed and
>> > running.
>> >
>> > What can I do to avoid the "font increase"?
>>
>> The best thing you can do with VMWare (from my own experiences) is to
>> force 96 DPI in /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc.  Find this line:
>>
>>    ServerArgsLocal=-nolisten tcp
>>
>> And add "-dpi 96" to it:
>>
>>    ServerArgsLocal=-nolisten tcp -dpi 96
>
> That was the solution. I checked the resolution before the upgrade with
> "xdpyinfo | grep resolution" (Tip from the German list): 75 dpi.
> Afterwards: 96 dpi. Setting it to 75 solved the issue.
>
> I'd still like to know what exactly changed and if 75 or 96 is the
> "correct" value. Nevertheless, I have Xorg server 1.6 running and it
> looks fine.

Divide your screen resolution (pixels) by its visible area (inches) to
get DPI. For example my monitor screen is 16 inches wide and 12 inches
tall and I use 1600x1200 resolution. That is 100dpi. In my system this
is autodetected when xorg starts (maybe the nvidia drivers do it?).

Theoretically, I think if the DPI is set correctly, a 10 point font
will be the same physical size on any display.

I think most consumer-grade desktop LCD panels are around 75dpi. Some
mobile phones like Nokia N82 have a really high-density screen,
256dpi. So a website or program that measures its fonts or widgets in
fixed pixels rather than relative to the dpi will look dramatically
different in those cases.

Within programs, using KDE4 daily the DPI seems to be respected almost
eveywhere. Sometimes gtk+ apps will have huge fonts for no apparent
(to me) reason but I seem to be free of that problem at the moment.

[gentoo-user] Re: Re: big fonts after Xorg update

[Thorsten Kampe]

* Paul Hartman (Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:38:12 -0500)
> 
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 3:18 PM, Thorsten Kampe
> <thorsten@thorstenkampe.de> wrote:

> > That was the solution. I checked the resolution before the upgrade with
> > "xdpyinfo | grep resolution" (Tip from the German list): 75 dpi.
> > Afterwards: 96 dpi. Setting it to 75 solved the issue.
> >
> > I'd still like to know what exactly changed and if 75 or 96 is the
> > "correct" value. Nevertheless, I have Xorg server 1.6 running and it
> > looks fine.
> 
> Divide your screen resolution (pixels) by its visible area (inches) to
> get DPI. For example my monitor screen is 16 inches wide and 12 inches
> tall and I use 1600x1200 resolution. That is 100dpi. In my system this
> is autodetected when xorg starts (maybe the nvidia drivers do it?).

This is a VMware virtual machine using a virtual monitor on a physical 
machine with two physical monitors. I'm not sure whether calculating DPI 
that way would lead to meaningfull results for the virtual machine. This 
whole "hard" setting of DPI for a monitor seems anachronistic to me.

Thorsten

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Re: big fonts after Xorg update

[Paul Hartman]

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 3:47 PM, Thorsten Kampe
<thorsten@thorstenkampe.de> wrote:
> * Paul Hartman (Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:38:12 -0500)
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 3:18 PM, Thorsten Kampe
>> <thorsten@thorstenkampe.de> wrote:
>
>> > That was the solution. I checked the resolution before the upgrade with
>> > "xdpyinfo | grep resolution" (Tip from the German list): 75 dpi.
>> > Afterwards: 96 dpi. Setting it to 75 solved the issue.
>> >
>> > I'd still like to know what exactly changed and if 75 or 96 is the
>> > "correct" value. Nevertheless, I have Xorg server 1.6 running and it
>> > looks fine.
>>
>> Divide your screen resolution (pixels) by its visible area (inches) to
>> get DPI. For example my monitor screen is 16 inches wide and 12 inches
>> tall and I use 1600x1200 resolution. That is 100dpi. In my system this
>> is autodetected when xorg starts (maybe the nvidia drivers do it?).
>
> This is a VMware virtual machine using a virtual monitor on a physical
> machine with two physical monitors. I'm not sure whether calculating DPI
> that way would lead to meaningfull results for the virtual machine. This
> whole "hard" setting of DPI for a monitor seems anachronistic to me.

I think the DPI of the monitor would still be valid in the vmware
window, just set it to that of your physical monitor and I think it
should be the same. The size of 1 pixel in the vmware window should be
the same as the size of 1 pixel in your monitor normally. If your two
monitors are not the same DPI then things could be complicated though.
I don't use multi-monitors so I'm unfamiliar with how that would work.

In my Xorg.0.log I see these lines among others from the Nvidia driver
initialization:

(II) NVIDIA(0): Virtual screen size determined to be 2048 x 1152
(--) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (101, 100); computed from "UseEdidDpi" X config
(--) NVIDIA(0):     option

Not sure how it works for other video drivers. On this one, at least,
the DPI is set automatically.