Le jeudi 06 octobre 2011 à 16:41 +0100, Matthew Garrett a écrit : > On Thu, Oct 06, 2011 at 05:33:48PM +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > > > > Le Jeu 6 octobre 2011 17:18, Matthew Garrett a écrit : > > > The heuristic isn't the problem. The problem is that we have no > > > technology that allows us to handle the complicated case of multiple > > > displays, and solving it purely for the simple case makes the > > > complicated case *worse*. > > > > How does it make it worse? The heuristic does not solve the complicated case > > *at all*. How does removing it could possibly make it worse? > > What heuristic? The one you were writing about Me, I don't care about which heuristic you were thinking of. Any heuristic will annoy large numbers of users when you're dealing with text. The rules should be simple and stupid: A. on a single-screen system 1. use the xorg-detected screen size to compute actual DPI, base font sizes on it 2. if autodetection didn't work or the results looks wrong (because the hardware is broken, or it's not designed to be used on a desk but is a TV/a projector), ask the user to provide the screen size (displaying slider + a ruler in the locale's length unit, with the length unit displayed on screen too; users are smart enough to fake lengths if they want to). If you want market forces to work, crowdsource the complaining and tell the user his hardware is broken and he should take it with the manufacturer. 3. save the results and reuse them each time the same screen is used 4. propagate the resulting dpi so every toolkit can use them (ideally propagate it down to the xorg level so every toolkit that uses xorg dpi will just work) B. when a second screen is detected 1. use the same rules to get its size 2. if the computed dpi for the second screen is too different from the first one, ask the user what to do (optimize for screen 1, for screen 2, deoptimize both with a middle setting) 3. save the results to apply them automatically the next time this screen combination is encountered 4. longer term start thinking about how to apply different dpi to different outputs as screen densities have been clearly diverging for some years, and the compination of fixed-size laptops and increasing resolutions can only mean more divergence in the future C. for font sizes 1. display them in points (pt) or pixels (px), 2. display the unit you're using. Don't make the user guess what the perverted font dialog author had in mind 3. let the user specify them in points or pixels as he prefers, regardless of the default display unit 4. accept decimals, do not try to round sizes to integers 5. do not try to invent a new unit. Yes historical units are stupid and badly thought, but so are imperial units and letter format, and that's what some countries still use. Units are not there to be smart units are there so different people can agree on measurements. Points is what users will see in every electronic document they will be filling, no new unit will be better enough to outweight the hassle of the user having to deal with a new unit. If you have time to waste, go rewrite every electronic document app and format in the market to use your unit, and only afterwards inflict it on desktop users. And if you still think being pedantic about font size units is a good idea, try to use only Kelvins when speaking to others about temperatures and see how they react. -- Nicolas Mailhot -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
