Re: [Evolution-hackers] evolution's editors

[Craig Ringer <craig postnewspapers com au>]

On Mon, 2004-04-12 at 23:16, Germ�Po�ama�rote:

> > Default resolution is a bit different than minimum resolution.  Dialogs 
> > should be able to be used at 800x600.  That is a totally reasonable 
> > resolution on some systems (projectors, tablets, legacy etc.) and for 
> > some people (sight-limited, etc).  It may not look great at 800x600 but 
> > the user should be able to operate the dialog.  There is very little 
> > that is worse than a dialog that pops up that you can't use.

I strongly agree there. We have a fair number of linux thin clients that
run off very low end hardware, and one of the issues we have is dialog
boxes designed for 1024x768 or above. Most of our users need to ALT-drag
dialog boxes to get to the "OK" button. This isn't cool.

I expect that 14" monitors and 800x600 resolutions will be around for at
least another two or three years even in very developed countries - and
much longer in some other places.

Perhaps it'd be better to have the dialog usefully adapt to the
available screen real-estate?

> Also, my mom has a 17" monitor, but she uses 800x600 because is the
> resolution that she can read comfortable.

I've never understood that. It makes sense in Windows, where the
interface falls into a horrible heap if you increase the font size, but
under X displays apps are almost always very tolerant of weird font
sizes. Surely it's better to run at 1280x960 and get large, but smooth
and readable fonts than to use 800x600 and get big but chunky and
horrible fonts?

The X server should _automatically_ scale the fonts to result in the
appropriate on-screen point sizes by using the dpi discovered using DDC
or configured by the user. I've found this very effective with my users
(those on decent displays). One of them is nearly blind, and needs fonts
that measure 1" high to make them reasonably readable - yet we've found
during testing that she prefers 1600x1200 with large window borders and
large fonts over 800x600.

Craig Ringer