Screenresolutions, dimensions and DPI

General tips

The ultimate solution to ugly fonts is to use more pixels to draw them. That translates to using a larger nominal pixel size. when that has the effect of making fonts too big, more screen resolution is required at the same physical size. More pixels has a cubic effect, meaning it doesn’t require much more in nominal size to have a big effect.

Sometimes in order to make all screen objects bigger, people use a lower screen resolution than the optimal one a screen supports. This has the opposite effect, making fonts spindly or otherwise ugly. IOW, if your screen supports 1920x1080 but you are using 1366x768, a switch to using 1920x1080 and an increase nominal font sizes in settings is required.

I keep screen DPI set to 120 on a 24" 1920x1200 screen. The combination of 24" and 1920x1200 calculates to a DPI of 94. The application of a logical DPI of 120 results in fonts big enough to see that are never ugly. A 12pt font @120 DPI uses ~200px per glyph, compared to ~128 used @96 DPI, >56% more at the same physical size. The screen can’t actually produce that much resolution, but the effect of trying by the X server, with or without subpixel, hinting or anti-aliasing, works like magic.

Envy

pvdm@Envy:~> xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 16384 x 16384
eDP-1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+  40.00  
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

DPI=140,093023256

of

142

lesie

sietske@lesie:~> xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
eDP-1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm
   1920x1080     60.03*+  60.01    59.97    59.96    59.93  

DISPLAY: 15.6”, Full HD (1920 x 1080), IPS
Diagonal    15.6"
Pixel density   141.21 ppi
Panel Type  IPS
Resolution  1920 x 1080
Becomes "Retina" from   24 inches (62 cm)

HP elitebook 8570p

Horizontal pixels: 1600
Vertical pixels: 900
Diagonal size (inches):  15,77
        
 
Pixels per Inch     PPI:     116.41  
Dot Pitch:   0.22    
Screen Width:    13.74   
Screen Height:   7.73


pvdm@lapx:~> xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1600 x 900, maximum 16384 x 16384
LVDS connected primary 1600x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 345mm x 194mm
   1600x900       60.0*+   40.0  
   1440x900       59.9  
   1280x854       59.9  
   1280x800       59.8  
   1280x720       59.9  
   1152x768       59.8  
   1024x768       59.9  
   800x600        59.9  
   848x480        59.7  
   720x480        59.7  
   640x480        59.4  

samsung rv720 bla

samsie:~ # xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1600 x 900, maximum 16384 x 16384
LVDS connected primary 1600x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 345mm x 194mm
   1600x900      60.03*+  40.02  
   1440x900      59.89  
   1280x854      59.89  
   1280x800      59.81  
   1280x720      59.86  
   1152x768      59.78  
   1024x768      59.92  
   800x600       59.86  
   848x480       59.66  
   720x480       59.71  
   640x480       59.38  

116 DPI PvdM

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