Re: row and column size not being preserved when switching X displays

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 11:45:42PM +0100, Joe Wells (reverse mailbox letters only for non-public replies) 
wrote:
> I recently switched to a new computer with a display that has 141
> pixels per inch.  When I start the X server on my new computer, I
> inform it that it has 141 dpi.  When I run Gnumeric 1.2.12 (Gentoo
> ebuild) on the new computer displaying on its X server, my old
> documents get their row and column sizes screwed up.  When I run
> Gnumeric 1.2.12 on the new computer but instead displaying on the X
> server of my old computer (which thinks it is 75 dpi), my documents
> look the way they should.
>
> Using both X displays, the rows and columns get the same number of
> _pixels_.  For example, I have a row in which I have 8 point text and
> Gnumeric reports the height of the row is 9.75 points (13 pixels) on
> both X servers.  However, on the new X server, 13 pixels is way too
> small to display the text and everything gets displayed as ####.  On
> the old X server, 13 pixels is a good size.  When I print to
> PostScript, 8 point text looks exactly the same size.  So it is the
> row/column size that is changing.
>
> I looked in the source code and it appears that while it is running
> Gnumeric keeps track of the row and column sizes in pixels.  However,
> in the Gnumeric XML document format, it appears that Gnumeric keeps
> track of row and column sizes in points.
>
> How can I get this fixed?  If I knew what source code lines to hack
> on, I could do it, but I am way too busy to learn now.  I am happy to
> test patches that anyone sends me.

Gnumeric stores things as pts.  However, it defaults to using 96 dpi
for the display, which is what XL appears to do.  You can edit the
settings in the prefs dialog.  When the code was written most X
servers got the dpi measurements wrong, we should probably add a
setting to trust them now.