Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 238108
font size / display resolution ratio inverted
Last modified: 2007-12-10 05:34:33 EST
Description of problem: When increasing the display resolution, the font size decreases, i.e. the more screen estate (pixel-wise) you have, the smaller the fonts get, both inside and outside the displayed document. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): firefox-1.5.0.10-5.fc6 How reproducible: Easily Steps to Reproduce: 1. Lather: In "Edit -> Preferences -> Fonts&Colors -> Advanced", set "Display Resolution" to various values (with "Other", when asked about the length of the line, avoid lengths less than 3cm/1.2in as the UI may get unreadable) 2. Rinse: Restart firefox 3. Repeat Actual results: With high resolutions (i.e. more pixels on a defined length), the fonts get smaller. Expected results: Fonts get larger with increased resolution. Additional info: Bonus points for avoiding unreadably small font sizes. Super Extra Bonus points for avoiding font sizes so large that the UI elements don't fit on the screen ;-).
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 107803 ***
I don't believe the reporter's complaint is in any way related to bug 107803. I do believe that what he describes is WAD. With higher resolution comes higher real DPI. This is normal for any operating environment. If X doesn't correctly adjust DPI with an increase in resolution, you can expect system and FF UI fonts to get smaller as resolution is raised, because UI and system fonts are sized in pt, which are DPI dependant. Web page font preference sizes in FF are not dependant on DPI because they are defined in px rather than pt. However because more DPI means smaller px, one must manually adjust the FF font size preferences upwards as resolution is raised in order to maintain adequate font sizes in web pages.
Matej, sorry to reopen this one, but it's not the same as bug #107803, namely that bug #107803 deals only with document font sizes IIUC and I see the problem with fonts used in the UI outside the document. While they should either stay the same size or get larger with an increased resolution (I guess it's policy whether you want the one or the other), the UI fonts get smaller with increased resolution. I'll attach some screenshots to illustrate what I mean.
Created attachment 153633 [details] Firefox window when started with 72dpi display resolution
Created attachment 153634 [details] Firefox window when started with 96dpi display resolution
Created attachment 153635 [details] Firefox window when started with 130dpi display resolution Note that any resolution noticable higher than 130dpi makes the font almost unreadable.
OK, sorry Nils, I have to be really thick, but after looking at the screenshots, it really seems to me that it works as designed -- with higher resolution you get smaller fonts. What did you expect? Could you elaborate a little bit on what's the problem? And regarding comment 3 -- no, you are not setting DPI of webapge (i.e., how many pixels take it to make on CSS unit pt), this is DPI of whole screen. It is remainder of the time, when X servers were so broken, that they couldn't get their own DPI correctly, so some applications (LyX is other case here) were able to adjust themselves to the correct DPI of the screen despite what X server thought. Most of the X servers gets this correct most of the time, so although it remains available (and usually on whole desktop level -- e.g., Advanced settings of gnome-font-properties), it is rarely used, and IMHO firefox (and LyX) should relly on the environmental setting. Which means, that this setting SHOULD change size of the fonts of the user interface. Yes, some people are misusing this for changing DPI in HTML, but it is not intended purpose of it. Closing this as WORKSFORME and try to persuade me otherwise before reopening it.
Reopening as discussed on IRC.
Fedora Core 6 is no longer supported, could you please reproduce this with the updated version of the currently supported distribution (Fedora 7, 8, or Rawhide)? If this issue turns out to still be reproducible, please let us know in this bug report. If after a month's time we have not heard back from you, we will have to close this bug as CANTFIX. Setting status to NEEDINFO, and awaiting information from the reporter. [This is mass-filed message to all open Fedora Core 6 bugs related to Xorg or Gecko. If you see any other reason, why this bug shouldn't be closed, please, comment on it here.]
firefox-2.0.0.10-2.fc8 doesn't offer setting display resolutions anymore, closing.