[coreboot] Hi-DPI displays and showing text information for kevin in depthcharge

[Peter Stuge]

Paul Kocialkowski wrote:
> I am wondering what the best way to solve this would be.
..
> * Having larger fonts for hi-dpi displays

This should be the top priority, because it provides the best user
experience. (Ie. it looks the best.)


> * Scaling the font to reach a particular DPI (e.g. based on the physical
>   screen size reported from the EDID)

This is a great fallback solution which will make sure that a font is
*always* available. As others wrote, upscale only once during init.
If upscaling fails for whatever reason, fallback to the fallback is
to simply use the 8x16 font as-is. Better small text than no text.


> * Reducing the resolution, by optionally providing a preferred one
>   from the config

I consider this an unacceptable alternative. Not only is it unreliable
(it may not always work) but even more importantly it is likely to
provide a worse user experience (uglier scaling) than upscaling the
font, when the panel driver does scaling at all, otherwise the result
will be as Patrick described; black border around small part of panel.


> Among these, which ones do you think is the way to go?

Panels only have one native resolution, and that one is what they are
optimized for. It's a bad idea to try to use anything else. Use
hardware the way it was optimized for to get the best possible user
experience - "less than best possible user experience" isn't a great
goal.


> I think the question is also whether we want a generic way to
> handle this

Yes, please. This is not unique to any device, but has been a generic
problem since the VGA BIOS was invented.


//Peter