[Sugar-devel] Font display revisited

[Art Hunkins]

I am perplexed (nothing unusual).

I use the following recommended code to determine default font size for 
various versions of the XO and SoaS:
font = widget.get_pango_context().get_font_description()
font_size = font.get_size()

Recognizing that 1024 pango units = 1 point in font size, the various 
distributions furnish the following values:
XO-1, 7168 = 7pt. and displays at 7pts.
Strawberry, 10240 = 10pt., but displays at 7pts.
Blueberry, 10240 = 10pt., displaying correctly at 10pts.
Latest release, 0.87.3 (Generic Release 12), 10240, but displays at 
approximately 7.5pts.

In other words, SoaS releases with the same pango font description (= what 
we are urged to deal with rather than font sizes directly) display on the 
same monitor very differently. I think surely that the same pango 
description should display about the same (width-wise at least) for a given 
monitor, regardless of release.

What particularly confuses me is that the latest release nearly reverts to 
the Strawberry sizing, which was clearly too small for an average monitor. 
Do we need to anticipate that each new version of SoaS will effectively give 
a different default display size, even when pango contexts are identical?

This makes no sense whatever to me. It gives the developer little control 
over text display at all, with the possible exception of furnishing 
different code for each incarnation of SoaS. (This is what I'm currently 
doing - but I'd rather this not be a lifelong task.)

Art Hunkins