Hi,

a picture is worth a thousand words, so here it is: http://dionis.sai.msu.ru/~igor/screen.png

Application window fonts are ok, widgets fonts are ridiculously big. The screenshot is in English, however, my native language is Russian, and cyrillic fonts look ever worse. The font settings in "System parameters" are set to defaults. I tried to change things there - no good. Whatever I change, the application window fonts and widget fonts scale together. So if I make widget fonts the desired size, the application window fonts become small and unreadable.

My system: Lenovo X301, Fedora 23, kde 4.11, plasma 5.5.

xrandr reports correct pixel and physical display size:

LVDS1 connected primary 1440x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 287mm x 180mm

xdpyinfo reports wrong physical size:

screen #0:
dimensions: 1440x900 pixels (381x238 millimeters)
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch

The relevant lines from Xorg.log are

[ 30395.446] (--) intel(0): Output LVDS1 using initial mode 1440x900 on pipe 1
[ 30395.446] (==) intel(0): DPI set to (96, 96)

The actual resolution should be 127. However, if I force dpi=127 in "System parameters", all fonts become even bigger. Application window fonts just big, widget fonts are ridiculously HUGE.

My only assumption is that somehow application windows and widgets use different dpi (maybe 96 and 127). I tried to get rid of EDID info and forcing xorg resolution by creating an xorg config file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

Code: Select all

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier             "LVDS1"
    DisplaySize            287 180
    Option                 "UseEdidDpi" "False"
    Option                 "DPI" "96 x 96"
EndSection


but that did not change anything. I read it that some DE do not obey dpi info from xorg. Do not know if this is the reason.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Igor

I placed my original post in mid-december 2015. It is February 2016, several plasma/kde updates since December, but the problem is still here. Can anyone help? I have several Fedora 20 workstation/servers at work to manage, and I want to upgrade all of them from Fedora 20 to 23. However, it will be hard to explain users why the appearance degraded so much...

I also have problems with color corrections - the appropriate color profile can be chosen in System settings->Color corrections, but it has no effect. Using dispwin to manually load the profile does work until the user logs out. This is however a tolerable shortcoming.

I don't see anything wrong in the screenshot you're showing. Could you try to explain the problem more precisely?

sebas wrote:I don't see anything wrong in the screenshot you're showing. Could you try to explain the problem more precisely?

Thanks for the answer.

Well, I thought it was clear enough from the picture. Just compare the font size within widgets (e.g., "Hard Disk Space Usage") and compare it with the window title ("Konsole"). The former does not even fit in one line for this widget size. And I do not want widgets to occupy half screen area.. As I said in my original post, in cyrillic it looks even worse, as Russian is not as a "compact" language as English, words as usually longer...

That's not inconsistent, but a header - you either want a higher header level or alter the funciton in /usr/lib/qt/qml/org/kde/plasma/extras/Heading.qml
Whether it's good design to add a giant header to describe the obvious is a different question.

luebking wrote:That's not inconsistent, but a header - you either want a higher header level or alter the funciton in /usr/lib/qt/qml/org/kde/plasma/extras/Heading.qml
Whether it's good design to add a giant header to describe the obvious is a different question.

Inconsistency is a matter of terminology. To me, if font sizes in various desktop elements are so different, this means inconsistency. Widget titles are huge compared to everything else - window titles, panel texts, menus etc. As I said, any changes in System settings->Fonts scale everything, so the relative inconsistency remains.

Thanks for the tip about Heading.qml. However, I think this is not a proper way to fix things. Times when one had to tune everything manually editing lots of config files are long over. Beyound, next plasma/kde update will probably wipe all manual changes in Heading.qml... There should be a user-level mechanism to change font size in widgets. And, the default size should be more appropriate, in the first place...

Unrelated question: there are some other degradations in the current kde version. E.g., Device Manager does not mount removable usb sticks automatically (it used to). No corresponding config options in its settings. Strange, provided that long time passed already since the last major kde/plasma update. Could anyone tell at least tentatively, how long should users wait to get back the old kde functionality?

Thanks.

Inconsistency is a matter of terminology. To me, if font sizes in various desktop elements are so different, this means inconsistency.

Maybe I need glasses, but all header elements in plasmoids seem to have the same size, don't they?
That you don't like the header font size or headers in general does not make things "inconsistent" - and asking wrong things kills answers. I could really not make anything out of your first post.

Back on topic:
------
You can either ask for configurable header font sizes or plasmoids not to bring level 1 headers itfp.
This cannot be resolved here => bugs.kde.org, plasmashell component.


Please don't start unrelated subthreads and use facebook for general rants, but running "kcmshell5 device_automounter_kcm" should allow you to configure automounts (and the kcm is listed in systemsettings5, maybe your distro also provides and prefers systemsettings4?)

Right, nothing wrong with consistency here. The typography may not be everyone's taste, but it's how we designed the whole UI, and, quite frankly, this is the first time I hear a complaint like this. It may very well be an isolated opinion.

Designer hat on: "it's not a very good sign".

Either it's pointless waste of (vertical) space or the plasmoid content is too generic to speak for itself.
A watermarking backgound icon/image would likely be a totally sufficient hint, notably since the user needs to figure what this is only once in a lifetime (if he didn't place it there himself)
Less (no) space to the header also stresses the relevant content, right now you've an eye catching header what would be helpful if the block was stashed within some mass of information, but just draws attention from the actual information in this context.

You may want to consult the HIG team on this.

luebking wrote:Maybe I need glasses, but all header elements in plasmoids seem to have the same size, don't they?
That you don't like the header font size or headers in general does not make things "inconsistent" - and asking wrong things kills answers. I could really not make anything out of your first post.

Sorry, English is not my native language so maybe I was not clear enough. Still, with all due respect, is it not evident that widget titles are way too big compared to font size in all other GUI elements? Yes, plasmoid headers are all the same size, but this size is - let's now say - incoherent with font size in other apps. One does not need glasses to see that...

luebking wrote:You can either ask for configurable header font sizes or plasmoids not to bring level 1 headers itfp.
This cannot be resolved here => bugs.kde.org, plasmashell component.

I am not a kde expert and do not know what is "level 1 headers". Is is something like various headers (h1, h2, etc.) in html? Anyway, I'll try to ask a change at bugs.kde.org, thanks.

luebking wrote:...running "kcmshell5 device_automounter_kcm" should allow you to configure automounts (and the kcm is listed in systemsettings5, maybe your distro also provides and prefers systemsettings4?)

Thanks a lot for the tip. I am on Fedora 23, and system settings do have an entry allowing to configure how automounting works. Yet, risking starting another rant, I want to say that such a significant change - moving the setting from plasmoid properties (called by right-cliking on plasmoid), to system settings - is not evident for an average user. For a long time I knew that this setting was in Device Manager properties window. A major kde update and it is disappeared. I assumed that this was temporary degradation and that in time, things would return. However, this did not happen. How could I know that the whole approach has changed?

I understand that there should be good reasons for the change. However, the workspace should be more user-friendly and give him clear guide lines on changes. Like add a text to Device Manager properties window stating that automounting moved to system settings. Otherwise, a user is just stuck.

Anyway, thanks again for the tip.

sebas wrote:Right, nothing wrong with consistency here. The typography may not be everyone's taste, but it's how we designed the whole UI, and, quite frankly, this is the first time I hear a complaint like this. It may very well be an isolated opinion.

Just do not know what to say... You are probably comfortable reading this No offence intended.

Still, with all due respect, is it not evident that widget titles are way too big compared to font size in all other GUI elements?[/code]
No need to be sorry or something, it's just that "I think the font for plasmoid headers is too big" would have been a better description of your itch

Is is something like various headers (h1, h2, etc.)

Yes, I don't actually know whether there's a "legal" term for this and made the description up from the code.

moving the setting from plasmoid properties

No idea from my side. I never used that feature.
(There's a udev rule here that automounts and launches a backup when a certain device is attached, but I never understood the idea of general automounting *shrug*)

luebking wrote:(There's a udev rule here that automounts and launches a backup when a certain device is attached, but I never understood the idea of general automounting *shrug*)

My users often use SD cards to transfer images from photo cameras. For many, it is also easier to transfer stuff from Linux to Windows machines by using USB sticks. Sorry for offtopic.

Well, I am happy user of KDE (already 5 years). Recently I tried some Kubuntu distro to check out this new KDE 5, actually in the end I moved to KDE 5.
The font size inconsistency was first thing my eye catched after few seconds of firing up kubuntu live. Actually this is the only thing which makes KDE 5 look cheap (cheap like done by anybody (insert anybodies name here) with ms word, because he/she can change the font size/fonts without any typographer background). Maybe it is not KDE's problem, but breeze styling problem... I don't know, but It looks really awkward, and I can't understand how it is impossible to see the obvious problem.