Large fonts with latest Nvidia drivers

MS3FGX · 12-08-2006, 05:11 PM

I updated my Slackware 11 machine to version 9631 of the official Nvidia drivers last night, and while everything installed fine, the fonts on my system are much too large.

I had to change the WM and GTK fonts down to Arial 9 for them to be about the same size they were when using Arial 12 with version 8774 of the drivers.

Truth be told I am completely clueless about fonts in Linux, so I have no idea what I should be doing to diagnose this problem. Setting all the fonts down to smaller sizes seems to work for the most part, but some applications (like GVim) are still using a font that is much much larger than it was previously.

The interesting thing with GVim, if I try to set the font smaller (changing Arial 12 to Arial 11, for instance) the text actually gets much larger!

For example, this is what Arial 12 looks like and this is what Arial 11 looks like.

Anyone know what I can do to get this worked out?

P.S.

This applies to all users as well, it is not limited to only my user configuration on the machine.

acummings · 12-09-2006, 03:19 AM

al@AB60R:~$ xdpyinfo | grep resolution
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch
al@AB60R:~$

the dots per inch either higher or lower makes things bigger or smaller.

perhaps it now runs a different dpi than it formerly did. this is 1 thing that could explain for your bigger fonts everywhere.

--
Alan.

jets0n · 12-10-2006, 05:15 PM

Try starting X from console by running startx -- -dpi 72 , see if it's any better. It worked for me

MS3FGX · 12-10-2006, 07:14 PM

Yes, this seems to be heading in the right direction.

Running "xdpyinfo | grep resolution" returns:

resolution: 98x108 dots per inch

Which seems a strange figure. If I start X with "startx -- -dpi 72" then all of the fonts are absurdly small, which would probably mean that once I put them back up to Arial 12, they should look normal again.

So I guess the question is, which DPI should I be using (96 or 72) and how do I make that change permanent? I guess I want whatever the Slackware default is, since that is what I am used to over the past couple of years.

Is the DPI more of a personal preference than anything?

MS3FGX · 12-10-2006, 07:31 PM

OK, locking the DPI at 72x72 in xorg.conf and bringing the fonts back to Arial 12 seems to have returned things back to about what they looked like before the driver update.

Unless anyone else has any input on this issue (for instance, why the DPI changed in the first place), I think it is resolved now. Much thanks to you both, as I said, I am fairly new to the graphical side of Linux.

acummings · 12-11-2006, 01:36 AM

Code:

Section "Monitor"

    Identifier  "A90f+"

# HorizSync is in kHz unless units are specified.
# HorizSync may be a comma separated list of discrete values, or a
# comma separated list of ranges of values.
# NOTE: THE VALUES HERE ARE EXAMPLES ONLY.  REFER TO YOUR MONITOR'S
# USER MANUAL FOR THE CORRECT NUMBERS.

    HorizSync   31.5 - 79.0

#    HorizSync	30-64         # multisync
#    HorizSync	31.5, 35.2    # multiple fixed sync frequencies
#    HorizSync	15-25, 30-50  # multiple ranges of sync frequencies

# VertRefresh is in Hz unless units are specified.
# VertRefresh may be a comma separated list of discrete values, or a
# comma separated list of ranges of values.
# NOTE: THE VALUES HERE ARE EXAMPLES ONLY.  REFER TO YOUR MONITOR'S
# USER MANUAL FOR THE CORRECT NUMBERS.

    VertRefresh 50-100

    DisplaySize 270     202     #96x96 dpi 

EndSection

DisplaySize 270 202 #96x96 dpi

I added that line into the very last part of the enclosed section taken from my xorg.conf file. It gives me 96x96 dpi. The reason I added it is because I had needed bigger fonts.

I had initially run xorgconfig (sp?) which got me my desired xorg.conf file. But the file lacked the DisplaySize line and the dpi was somewhere near 72 dpi (until I added said DisplaySize line).

I'm certainly limited in my knowledge on this.

Matrox G450 AGP with 32 meg video ram is my dinosaur video adapter. Uses the MGA driver within xorg (on a near 3 month old Slack Current which is now outdated) -- now setting up Slack 11 on another computer, we'll see what happens.

If you change your screen resolution (1024 then up it to 1240 pixels, etc.) (I don't) (I always run 1024x768) then the above won't work. There's a better way to do it for screen res. changers/people. But I haven't learned it. Too much to learn, so little time.

dpi equates to dots per inch. more/higher could (though maybe not under normal circumstances -- I don't really know) have the possibility for a less grainy appearance.

At the near 72 dpi, graininess was not a problem for me. But just all fonts everywhere all over the place needed to be bigger for me.

There's such a thing as multiple different dpi fonts onboard too. For example 100dpi fonts versus some that are of lesser dpi.

How to get it to use which dpi font under what circumstance -- well, I haven't learned the all of it yet.

If someone has pointers to other threads (I know this has been talked about) and/or links to outside articles on these mentioned topics would be greatly appreciated.

I just recently started enabling (a fonts topic, mentioned elsewhere and mentioned in other threads in this forum too) the bytecode interpreter.

--
Alan.