267194 - dpi/fonts page overhaul is overdue

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[Felix Miata]

Page is largely obsolete, last changed over 4 years ago.

Comment 1

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: First draft rewrite

Comments welcome. I couldn't check the 4 OL items starting midway down the
page, so don't know if they are still valid. I can checkin via doctor once
discussed and changed as appropriate.

Comment 2

[Justin Wood (:Callek)]

My only comment is to add a note for the irc: link to #css to state that it is
for work with the CSS file solution, since CSS really should not be used for
general linux font/dpi stuff.  (Though we do stray off-topic alot currently)

Comment 3

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: 2nd draft - includes 96 DPI floor discussion

Comment 4

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: 3rd draft - various HTML and language tweaks

Comment 5

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: 4th draft - partial undo (96 DPI floor is Mac-only)

sdf sdfsd

Comment 6

[Akkana Peck]

I like the updating.

The first sentence mentions points and underlines it, but doesn't define it. 
Maybe it should?  (Or link to a definition somewhere.)  Same with DPI.  It
starts out pretty technical and using a lot of big words, where the old version
started out with "Here's a general description of a problem you might be seeing"
(fonts too small in this or that part of the window).

> don't confuse dots and pixels. A dot may or may not equal a pixel.

I don't understand that, so the intended reader probably won't.  When is a dot
different from a pixel, on a screen?  None of the interpretations I came up with
made sense to me in the context of X screen DPI.

In the prefs section (if changing the X server resolution doesn't work), I'd
suggest listing the UI method first; or even dropping the mention of editing
user.js entirely, since going through the prefs UI is much better for most users.

In the link to the customizing page, might it be better to jump straight to
#usercss on that page?

Comment 7

[Felix Miata]

The underlines in the first sentence are from the <acronym> tag. Mouseover them
to see title attribute tootip definitions. I thought that would be less clutter
than links to definitions or explicitly included definitions. The intent here
isn't really to educate about points & DPI, but to help users fix their pt text
sizes.

The dots/pixels reference is about the xdpyinfo output. Output of resolution is
in dots per inch, while output of dimensions is in pixels. I would expect the
reader to try xdpyinfo about that point in working his way through the page, and
simply want him to avoid trying to treat them as synonymous either accidentally
or intentionally. 

The user.js method is in there for the benefit of users who might want to script
launch with different resolutions according to where launched from. I put the
three methods there in reverse difficulty order in order to steer people away
from the UI method. The reason to do that is its inference that 72 DPI is likely
to be a sensible selection, being first listed, and even included at all. If it
were up to me 72 wouldn't be there except on Mac. IOW, I would list only 96,
system, & other. Moz really isn't happy below 96. OTOH, maybe I should highlight
that because of Windows use of 96 as the default, users should try it first to
try and make theirs like most other users?

I've already started v5 work, mainly to clearly segregate the DPI section from
the CSS section, so all further comments appreciated. Note I got a few comments
on IRC, but I don't think I made note of or used them all before they got lost
off the scrollback.

Comment 8

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: 5th draft - +headings +build-selection-section +tweaks

Comment 9

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: 6th draft - +intro-section +tweaks -setenv

This should be really close to fully baked.

I left the browser.display.screen_resolution paragraphs in the same order as
before for the additional reason that the method most likely to be used (UI) is
immediately followed by the instruction to restart Moz to make the change
effective, which applies to all 3 methods and therefore naturally falls last in
the subsection.

Comment 10

[Akkana Peck]

I still think the "setting through the UI" should come first (and should
probably be the only one -- what's the point of mentioning the others here?) but
it's not that big a deal.  I like all the other changes.

Comment 11

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: 7th draft - more tweaking

mostly more use of <dfn> and the title attribute, but also referred to markup
reference and style guide more

Comment 12

[Felix Miata]

I tweaked attachment 168222 [details] to remove exhibitions of bug 67127, then used Doctor
to check it in as valid HTML 4.01 strict. -> Fixed

Comment 13

[Felix Miata]

Attachment: partial redo

I somehow managed to miss addressing the fact that DPI does not impact GTK1 UI
fonts. So, I remedied that with amendments to sections 2 & 3 checked in via
doctor.