alt Hacker NewsThe end-user UIs don't ask you to calculate anything. Typically they have a slider from 100% to, say, 400% and let you set this to something like 145%.
This may take some getting used to if you're familiar with DPI and already know the value you like, but for non-technical users it's more approachable. Not everyone knows DPI or how many dots they want to their inches.
That the 145% is 1.45 under the hood is really an implementation detail.
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atq2119 • last Wednesday at 12:26 AM
Not to mention that only a small fraction of the world uses inches...
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I don't care about what we call the metric, I argue that a relative metric, where the reference point is device dependent is simply bad design.
I challenge you, tell a non-technical user to set two monitors (e.g. laptop and external) to display text/windows at the same size. I will guarantee you that it will take them significant amount of time moving those relative sliders around. If we had an absolute metric it would be trivial. Similarly, for people who regularly plug into different monitors, they would simply set a desired DPI and everywhere they plug into things would look the same instead of having to open the scale menu every time.