Comments on: Squib of the day: line weight http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2009/03/11/squib-of-the-day-line-weight/ "Many window managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like Cheerios." Sun, 26 Sep 2010 15:08:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Screwtape http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/2009/03/11/squib-of-the-day-line-weight/comment-page-1/#comment-896 Screwtape Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:36:17 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/metacity/?p=438#comment-896 It certainly would be useful to be able to control line weight - the most common example I can think of is drawing the "X" on the close-button. Having the units be "multiples of the current icon height" seems fairly arbitrary and annoying, though. Shouldn't they be 'multiples of the default line width'? Another alternative might be for themes to be able to specify what font-size ranges they're usable with, and if the window font-size is larger than the listed maximum, double the size of theme-units until the font-size fits. On the similar subject of high-resolution displays, you might be interested to read about how browsers deal with the issue: for Firefox specifically, a CSS "pixel" is defined to be "1/96th of an inch, rounded to the nearest device pixel". In practice, screens up to about 144dpi will draw 1-CSS-pixel borders with one physical pixel, screens up to about 240dpi will draw 1-CSS-pixel borders with two physical pixels, and so forth: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2007/02/units_patch_lan.html Actually, the cleanest solution for v3 themes might just be to allow all dimension attributes to have an optional 'units' parameter, being either "em" for relative-to-window-font sizing, or "px" for relative-to-screen-resolution sizing. Of course, you'd have to figure out what "em" meant in border styles with the title-bar hidden. It certainly would be useful to be able to control line weight – the most common example I can think of is drawing the “X” on the close-button. Having the units be “multiples of the current icon height” seems fairly arbitrary and annoying, though. Shouldn’t they be ‘multiples of the default line width’?

Another alternative might be for themes to be able to specify what font-size ranges they’re usable with, and if the window font-size is larger than the listed maximum, double the size of theme-units until the font-size fits.

On the similar subject of high-resolution displays, you might be interested to read about how browsers deal with the issue: for Firefox specifically, a CSS “pixel” is defined to be “1/96th of an inch, rounded to the nearest device pixel”. In practice, screens up to about 144dpi will draw 1-CSS-pixel borders with one physical pixel, screens up to about 240dpi will draw 1-CSS-pixel borders with two physical pixels, and so forth:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2007/02/units_patch_lan.html

Actually, the cleanest solution for v3 themes might just be to allow all dimension attributes to have an optional ‘units’ parameter, being either “em” for relative-to-window-font sizing, or “px” for relative-to-screen-resolution sizing.

Of course, you’d have to figure out what “em” meant in border styles with the title-bar hidden.

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