[Pkg-tcltk-devel] Bug#918333: tk8.6: default X11 font sizes are set in pixels

[Ivan Krylov]

Package: tk8.6
Version: 8.6.6-1+b1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

I'm using a display with a large DPI (>300). Applications setting their
default font to a sane value in physical units (such as points) have
their fonts properly scaled. Tk applications that don't use custom fonts
(or even don't have an setting to change fonts) and rely on TkDefaultFont
instead, unfortunately, render as very tiny.

One way to fix that would be to change library/ttk/fonts.tcl to use
physical units (which is what the attached patch does). Above there is
a comment that advises against that, though.

What else can we do to make Tk applications work better on high-DPI
displays?

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.6
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-debug'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.18.0-0.bpo.3-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=ru_RU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=ru_RU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

Versions of packages tk8.6 depends on:
ii  libc6           2.24-11+deb9u3
ii  libfontconfig1  2.11.0-6.7+b1
ii  libfreetype6    2.6.3-3.2
ii  libtcl8.6       8.6.6+dfsg-1+b1
ii  libtk8.6        8.6.6-1+b1
ii  libx11-6        2:1.6.4-3+deb9u1
ii  libxext6        2:1.3.3-1+b2
ii  libxft2         2.3.2-1+b2
ii  libxss1         1:1.2.2-1
ii  zlib1g          1:1.2.8.dfsg-5

Versions of packages tk8.6 recommends:
ii  lxterminal [x-terminal-emulator]  0.3.0-2
ii  stterm [x-terminal-emulator]      0.6-1
ii  xterm [x-terminal-emulator]       327-2

tk8.6 suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information
-------------- next part --------------
--- tk8.5-8.5.19/library/ttk/fonts.tcl	2015-10-23 18:01:01.000000000 +0300
+++ tk8.5-8.5.19/library/ttk/fonts.tcl.new	2019-01-05 11:45:10.460000000 +0300
@@ -131,10 +131,10 @@
 	    set F(family) "Helvetica"
 	    set F(fixed)  "courier"
 	}
-	set F(size) -12
-	set F(ttsize) -10
-	set F(capsize) -14
-	set F(fixedsize) -12
+	set F(size) 12
+	set F(ttsize) 10
+	set F(capsize) 14
+	set F(fixedsize) 12
 
 	font configure TkDefaultFont -family $F(family) -size $F(size)
 	font configure TkTextFont    -family $F(family) -size $F(size)