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Re: [On-Topic] any favorite tutorials or other helps for high-DPI monitors?

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On 2025-12-24 11:15 p.m., Robert Riches wrote:
> 
> Does anyone have favorite tutorials or other helps for dealing
> with a high-DPI transition?
> 
> I'm Running Devuan (currently Daedalus, hopefully soon Excalibur)
> using plain X and fvwm2, no DE as such with 1920x1200 monitors.
> Just purchased a round of 4k monitors, so I'll be needing to
> adjust xterm fonts, web browser issues, other GUI application
> issues, etc.

It's been a couple years since made a similar switch.  But as far as I
recall, there's not much to do other than configuring X.  I had to
manually specify the monitors' physical size (in millimetres) in my
xorg.conf so that X could calculate the correct DPI.  Then everything
that's measured in points just kind of fell into place.  (E.g., there
was nothing to be done for LibreOffice, etc.)

You'll need to switch your window manager to a high-DPI theme (easy with
my choice, xfwm4) since that's all laid out in pixels and you'll have
tiny icons and title bars if you don't change.

There were very few apps that required any tweaking once X and the
window manager were correctly configured.  The venerable 'gv' is the
only one I can think of that required its own DPI setting (in
~/.Xresources) rather than using X's own.

> For web browser issues, I anticipate a lot of fun with websites
> and web apps that use (n)px directives for some of their margins
> and spacing.  If the browser interprets those at face value,
> mixed with other directives in units of text elements and such,
> things could end up looking somewhat different from how the
> developers intended.
That's actually not an issue.  HTML/CSS "px" are NOT device pixels but
units of 1/96 inches.[1]  In other words, HTML/CSS "px" are standardized
at 96 DPI regardless of actual screen resolution.  So if something
specifies 24px it actually means 1/4 inch.  On my 4K displays that ends
up being more like 40 device pixels.  So websites will still work more
or less as expected.

[1] https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_units.asp

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Thread

[On-Topic] any favorite tutorials or other helps for high-DPI monitors? Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> - 2025-12-25 04:15 +0000
  Re: [On-Topic] any favorite tutorials or other helps for high-DPI monitors? The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2025-12-25 11:45 +0000
    Re: [On-Topic] any favorite tutorials or other helps for high-DPI monitors? Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> - 2025-12-26 02:03 +0000
  Re: [On-Topic] any favorite tutorials or other helps for high-DPI monitors? John-Paul Stewart <jpstewart@personalprojects.net> - 2025-12-25 21:38 -0500
    Re: [On-Topic] any favorite tutorials or other helps for high-DPI monitors? Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> - 2025-12-26 03:55 +0000
      Re: [On-Topic] any favorite tutorials or other helps for high-DPI monitors? John-Paul Stewart <jpstewart@personalprojects.net> - 2025-12-26 11:10 -0500
        Re: [On-Topic] any favorite tutorials or other helps for high-DPI monitors? Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> - 2025-12-31 05:00 +0000
    Re: [On-Topic] any favorite tutorials or other helps for high-DPI monitors? c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2025-12-26 00:03 -0500
  Re: [On-Topic] any favorite tutorials or other helps for high-DPI monitors? c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2025-12-26 00:00 -0500

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