High-DPI displays in GNOME: machine available, developer wanted

[Brion Vibber <brion pobox com>]

Hi all --

Some months back I inquired about plans for high-DPI displays after obtaining a 'Retina' MacBook Pro... I basically got told "donate hardware" but only had the one machine which I'm actively using. As it happens, I've more recently acquired a Chromebook Pixel, with a similarly high-resolution 2560x1700 screen.

I still need the MacBook for work, but the Pixel is sitting idle in my living room; I would be interested in donating it to some developer who is seriously planning to work on high-DPI display improvements in the GNOME desktop such as:
* icon and control sizes that consistently match with the font scaling

* mouse cursor that's not super-tiny

* automatic detection of high-DPI screens and setting of the font scaling without user intervention

* automatic scaling for legacy X11 apps?
* maybe even support for mixed-resolution systems (internal display high-res, external monitor low-res)

The Pixel ships with Chrome OS but can run regular Linux when developer mode is switched in. (Support for the trackpad and touchscreen is not yet available in mainline distros, but you can use a USB or bluetooth mouse for the meantime...)

If anybody's seriously interested, please let me know.

If I should be asking this on another list, let me know that too. :) Thanks!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / bvibber @ wikimedia.org)