RFC: change font sizes

[Martijn Klingens]

On Saturday 31 January 2004 16:48, Stephan Kulow wrote:
> Am Samstag 31 Januar 2004 00:27 schrieb Martijn Klingens:
> > Isn't that because IE hardcodes a 96dpi setting whereas Qt properly
> > honours
>
> Where did you read that?

It's the standard DPI setting that is used on Windows 2000 and below. With 
MSIE 6 and newer and Win XP and newer it is now possible to specify higher 
DPI values, but AFAICS it's not possible to set lower values. Also, the DPI 
value doesn't seem to adjust itself when you adjust the display resolution.

See e.g. the following links:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=820286
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/overview/highdpi.asp

> > the X server's DPI setting? After all points are a size that can be
> > mapped
>
> Qt is irrelevant here, khtml requests always pixel sizes anyway.

Based on what DPI setting? Not the X server's?

> > I'm not sure we should butcher these typographical rules just to become
> > IE compliant.
>
> The question is surely not what's correct or what's not. The question is
> what do 90% of the web masters expect when they layout images together with
> text. I can't say, but I'm pretty sure they didn't measure their images in
> inches.

Well, if I specify a 12pt font I want it to be the same size on both my screen 
and my printer unless I'm zooming in or out. Why would HTML behave different 
from any other typographic tool? Would it be acceptable if KWord didn't 
properly honour the DPI setting? Certainly not. Would it be acceptable if my 
12pt font is dependent on my screen resolution? Certainly not.

I know that Windows doesn't use that logic, and back when the first popular 
Windows versions emerged (3.x and 9x) it was much less of a problem with less 
diverse screen sizes and less possible resolutions, but that doesn't mean we 
can't learn from their mistakes and do better.

Doesn't the W3C say something about it either? And also note that with the 
upcoming 133+ dpi screens we *REALLY* shouldn't have hardcoded DPI values, 
even Microsoft acknowledges that. The next major versions (even for handhelds 
and PDAs) will all support high-dpi settings properly.

-- 
Martijn