[Development] Revisiting high-DPI configuration options

[Ulf Hermann]

> I'm still entirely sure that "let the user decide" was a better way to
> settle how big the page should be, what fonts and colour-schemes to use;
> by all means let the author give hints and suggestions to the
> presentation system, but let the user have the final say.  I shall like
> the look of your document better if it's in a font I've chosen because I
> find it easier or nicer to read; I shall like the appearance of your
> page better if the overall colour scheme fits in with my desktop
> environment; I shall like your web-site better if it adapts itself to my
> tastes - and letting it do so spares you the need to agonise over which
> entirely subjective details appeal to a bigger audience.

I totally agree with this as long as we're talking about documents - mostly consisting of text, to be read top to bottom (or some other direction, depending on locale). It gets hairy if we're talking about graphical applications where text only plays a minor role, and most of the visual elements have size constraints. It's very hard to have all those visual elements and their interactions scale smoothly to any dimensions or color schemes the user may choose. So, for those applications the designer usually chooses a few predefined UI styles, and tries to prevent the user from messing with those, as the result of that messing would only look bad and glitchy.

Ulf