fix for web browser and other app resolution problems

[Albert Cahalan]

Mary Lou Jepsen writes:
> [Albert Cahalan]

>> The useful resolutions are 1200x900, 600x450, and 400x300.
>> Simple integer scaling can cover all of these."
>
> It may be better to allow user-adjustable increase and decrease
> of the font size.

That tends to break things. It's a nice extra that will work
some of the time. If the GUI is to be kept simple, I think this
needs to lose out to screen scaling.

Web sites tend to be better about screen size differences.
Not that we haven't all seen sites that require something
specific of course, but as a general rule it'd work better
to change the screen resolution.

This is also a low-effort way to fix lots of other apps.
Sugar tells the X server to scale by 2x, X tells the app
that the screen is now 600x450, and everything looks bigger.

BTW, the scaling in OS build 303 sometimes leaves thin white
gaps between images. Such problems often come from rounding.
The end of these problems is unlikely to be anytime soon.

> I'd personally prefer smaller fonts on the web
> browser, but children often like/need large letters when they are
> first learning to read. Having the user-choosable font size would
> allow this.

Browsing arbitrary web pages is really for the older kids.
A kid just learning to read will be SERIOUSLY intimidated by
a page full of text, no matter how big you make the text.
Remember that web pages for begining readers can specify
very large text -- which should not then be doubled in size.

So I guess the right answer here is "make a special web site
for the 1st grade kids" or even "stick to the school's ebooks".

> For applications that are written for a certain resolution it would
> be nice to allow a way for the application to fill our entire screen
> (it's small enough as it is - it would be nice to fully use it).

There are a few of those. AFAIK the hardware can't scale from
any of the popular resolutions, and doing a good job in software
would be really slow. 600x450 and 400x300 should be fast though.