Re: Making pt a non-physical unit

On 1/5/10 9:56 AM, Richard Fink wrote:
> How is this even possible without knowing the actual physical dimensions
> of the display?

Whatever made you think these are unknown?  They're certainly known to 
the OS (e.g. watching debug output from an X server starting up shows 
various information about the display including its self-reported 
physical size; in my measuring with a ruler these sizes are pretty much 
correct).

In practice, Gecko asks the OS for this information.

> I find it astonishing that – how many years after the “plug ‘n’ play”
> spec was first implemented? – displays do not, as a matter of course,
> communicate their physical dimensions to the OS.

Every single display I've used recently (last 5 years) does...

-Boris