Which DPI do you use?

daffyduck · 2026-07-01 19:09:39

Here is a question for you all, everybody and anybody.

Which DPI setting do you use?
You can read it out by opening the "Appearance" application, and then look under the tab "Fonts".

Post the answers here.

The answers are important for theme developers, so that they know how to size the theme graphics.

scm · 2026-07-01 20:30:46

daffyduck wrote:

Here is a question for you all, everybody and anybody.
Which DPI setting do you use?
You can read it out by opening the "Appearance" application, and then look under the tab "Fonts".
Post the answers here.
The answers are important for theme developers, so that they know how to size the theme graphics.

110 DPI

eriefisher · 2026-07-01 20:43:18

96

daffyduck · 2026-07-02 13:35:13

Thank you for your answers so far.

Here are some usual setups that result in such DPI settings under conditions that reproduce the standard size of a CSS pixel:

96 DPI = 24-inch display 1920 × 1080 at 75 cm distance
110 DPI = 24-inch display 1920 × 1080 at 86 cm distance

kwizzz · 2026-07-02 15:34:21

Depends on my laptop. One is perfect with 96 (old non HiDPI), the other is ok with 120, though I recently went to 130 through 125, especially for better reading of xfce wiki pages and this forum.

I appreciate being able to adjust DPI while keeping the other stuff small (as opposed to those global screen scaling)

Last edited by kwizzz (2026-07-02 15:36:11)

daffyduck · 2026-07-02 17:14:14

kwizzz wrote:

... especially for better reading of xfce wiki pages and this forum.
I appreciate being able to adjust DPI while keeping the other stuff small (as opposed to those global screen scaling)

AFAIK, the DPI setting does scale everything (or, it should), not just the fonts. It is somewhat confusingly placed under the "Fonts" tab (I complained about such placement in another post). Rare applications misbehave and do not honor it.

For better reading of this forum, I recommend that you press CTRL-plus (= zoom-in) in your browser. You can press it multiple times to get a bigger "zoom" (i.e. scaling factor).
Or, if you prefer using the mouse, there is an option in all browsers, somewhere, to set the page scaling.

Last edited by daffyduck (2026-07-02 17:25:39)

gogogadget · 2026-07-04 10:08:04

27" for 1920x1080 --> 82 dpi

daffyduck · 2026-07-04 10:45:53

gogogadget wrote:

27" for 1920x1080 --> 82 dpi

I also use picom, I like it.
Regarding your setup, you would get standard angular CSS pixel size if the display was positioned at 72 cm distance (although there are no very important reasons reason to strictly match CSS pixel size).
Since your DPI is quite low, I would suggest turning font antialiasing to ON, with full hinting, to make text more readable (less blurry).
Another way is to make each individual font larger than your distro's defaults, but that is risky because it can mess up positioning of GUI elements, so I wouldn't recommend it.

Added later 35 min 31 s:
Here is my recommendation for subpixel font rendering / hinting :
0 to 95 DPI: full
96 to 119 DPI: medium
120 to 143 DPI: slight
144 DPI or more: none

Added later 1 h 28 min 40 s:

I just read a few articles online that try to recommend DPI settings, and I noticed right away that most of them are full of misinformation.

A simple fact: it is impossible to recommend a DPI setting without knowing the eyes-to-display distance. So if a guide says something like “100 DPI for 24-inch monitors,” it’s an immediate red flag that the author doesn’t really understand what they’re talking about.

For a basic DPI recommendation, all three data points are needed:
- the eyes-to-display distance
- the display size, and
- the display resolution.

On top of that, you have to account for people with less-than-ideal eyesight, whether they wear glasses, are far-sighted, or are near-sighted, because those factors all affect what DPI should feel comfortable.

gogogadget · 2026-07-04 21:13:29

Thanks for the detailed answer. cool

daffyduck wrote:

Since your DPI is quite low, I would suggest turning font antialiasing to ON, with full hinting, to make text more readable (less blurry).
Another way is to make each individual font larger than your distro's defaults, but that is risky because it can mess up positioning of GUI elements, so I wouldn't recommend it.

The hinting is on "slight", because what made a real difference is setting up some variables in /etc/environment.

FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="cff:no-stem-darkening=0 autofitter:no-stem-darkening=0"

Letters became thinner/less blurry, according to the ArchWiki, it's a solution for some applications, but in my case, the whole desktop looks better.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Font_c … _is_blurry

daffyduck · 2026-07-04 23:16:12

gogogadget wrote:

Thanks for the detailed answer.
Letters became thinner/less blurry, according to the ArchWiki, it's a solution for some applications, but in my case, the whole desktop looks better.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Font_c … _is_blurry

That link was interesting, so I went on and finally got to reading:
https://freetype.org/freetype2/docs/hin … neral.html

Apparently, they finally figured out in 2015 that font rendering requires gamma correction. Better late than never. I think GIMP still does image resizing wrong (i.e. does not take gamma correction into account by default).

You can immediately notice that "recommended" gamma for fonts is 1.8. Which is, of course, wrong (but better than gamma 1.0), because standard sRGB gamma should be used.
The reason why 1.8 is: to preserve the look of fonts from some far past, because the designers targeted it and now that's supposedly impossible to change. But, with sRGB gamma, small fonts would end up even thinner. How so?

And that gets us to the final problem. In the test images, it can be immediately noticed (sizes 12 to 14) that font rendering is, in fact, completely wrong. The proper method is probably to render glyphs at very high resolution (point sampling), then reject high frequencies in multiple successive steps, each with a reduction factor of 2. But, which army of programmers is going to tackle that issue? And, which few people in the world even know about the correct method?

So, in the mean time, the stem darkening hack gets us the desired effect of making small fonts at lest somewhat readable.

gogogadget · 2026-07-05 13:14:58

daffyduck wrote:

That link was interesting, so I went on and finally got to reading:
https://freetype.org/freetype2/docs/hin … neral.html

Very interesting, thanks.

daffyduck · 2026-07-07 14:27:09

daffyduck wrote:

The proper method is probably to render glyphs at very high resolution (point sampling), then reject high frequencies in multiple successive steps, each with a reduction factor of 2. But, which army of programmers is going to tackle that issue? And, which few people in the world even know about the correct method?

This text of mine is in fact a grave mistake. I think I have figured out 10 times simpler, faster, and better (legibility) method to render glyphs at small font sizes.

Well, stem darkening is likely a good idea when you have dark text on a very bright background.

But, a bright text on a dark background... that is not going to render correctly with stem darkening/brightening. Legibility will be mediocre, and the font will not look correct.

Last edited by daffyduck (2026-07-07 14:42:19)

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#1 2026-07-01 19:09:39

Which DPI do you use?

#2 2026-07-01 20:30:46

Re: Which DPI do you use?

#3 2026-07-01 20:43:18

Re: Which DPI do you use?

#4 2026-07-02 13:35:13

Re: Which DPI do you use?

#5 2026-07-02 15:34:21

Re: Which DPI do you use?

#6 2026-07-02 17:14:14

Re: Which DPI do you use?

#7 2026-07-04 10:08:04

Re: Which DPI do you use?

#8 2026-07-04 10:45:53

Re: Which DPI do you use?

#9 2026-07-04 21:13:29

Re: Which DPI do you use?

#10 2026-07-04 23:16:12

Re: Which DPI do you use?

#11 2026-07-05 13:14:58

Re: Which DPI do you use?

#12 2026-07-07 14:27:09

Re: Which DPI do you use?

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