Hi Martin,

Martin Wirblat wrote:
> Juan Vuletich wrote:
> ...
>
> > I also enhanced the (fixed) kerning of the fonts, especially at larger
> > sizes for normal and at all sizes for italics. (Thanks Martin for the
> > suggestions, please check them now).
> >
> > I also added:
> >    Preferences tinyFonts   "For PDAs"
> >    Preferences smallFonts   "For PDAs"
> >    Preferences standardFonts   "For standard displays"
> >    Preferences bigFonts            "For standard displays"
> >    Preferences veryBigFonts      "For hires displays (for example the
> > XO) or for large displays"
> >    Preferences hugeFonts            "For hires displays (for example
> > the XO) or for large displays"
> > These sets the size of fonts (code, lists, buttons, title, etc), the
> > height of the title bar, the height of button rows and the width of
> > scrollbars.
> ...
>
> Very nice. I like especially the ability to choose fonts from tiny to 
> huge and have *all* other UI elements resized accordingly. This is the 
> way to go!

Thanks. I'm glad you like it.

>
> Eventually the work intensive part going this route will be the icons. 
> But it is necessary, given that the span of DPI resolutions of future 
> displays will only expand. I just learned that since Windows Vista 
> Microsoft is "DPI-aware" as they call it. They advocate to write 
> programs so that they are being able to accommodate to displays and 
> user preferences over a wide range.
>
> This involves supplying all icons in several sizes and it also 
> requires developers to keep informing texts short and dialog boxes 
> only scarcely filled with objects. Otherwise application windows 
> become quickly too big to fit on the screen.
>
> Just a small calculation: If a user prefers a font with twice the size 
> of some preinstalled small "standard" and display pixel sizes vary by 
> only a factor of 2, one would have to support a DPI range of factor 4. 
> Of course there are disabled users who can only read really huge fonts 
> like 5 times the standard size and future displays will easily break 
> the 0.1 mm pixel barrier. At the other end they are already nearing 1 
> mm for TV/desktop mix mode displays.
>
> Since Vista Windows seems to have the ability to zoom all windows of 
> selected applications per smoothed bitmap scaling by the graphics card 
> if the user finds their UI elements too small. Windows transforms 
> mouse coordinates and otherwise simulates a DPI value different from 
> the OS-wide chosen one for the whole app.
>
> This is thought as a makeshift for the many older programs out there 
> that are not DPI-aware. Embarrassingly almost every existing program 
> falls in that category today, and so, amazingly, I find myself playing 
> with the idea to upgrade to Windows 7.
>
> Cheers,
> Martin

DPI awareness is not the way to do it. And application zoom by the OS is 
a low quality workaround. I know what I'm talking about. I specialized 
in image and signal processing, did my thesis on those areas, and did 
research at my university for several years.

The real solution is to forget about pixels and do real scalable UIs, 
like Morphic 3. Take a look at 
http://www.jvuletich.org/Morphic3/TheFutureOfTheGUI_01.html and other 
entries in my page.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich