Re: Units and resolution independence for gtk+

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 11 Aug 2008, at 14:04, Tommi Komulainen wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 7:02 PM, Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>  
> wrote:
> > Is a physical size units even interesting? It just generally leads to
> > DPI style flamewars. For instance, a projector screen is really  
> > large,
> > but you don't want tiny fonts anyway, because you watch it from far
> > away. Something similar but reversed applies for the case of  
> > handhelds.
>
> FWIW physical sizes are convenient when defining a UI layout for
> finger use, or physical interaction in general. A button must be at
> least WxH mm to be usable with finger and describing that without
> physical units loses some of the semantics.

Agreed, if we're harbouring any notion of writing mobile device  
guidelines at some point, being able to define certain elements using  
physical units would probably be useful.

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems