How can I make PDFs appear life-size when displayed at 100%?
- by ændrük
When I open a letter size PDF and then zoom to 100%, the page physically displayed on my monitor is smaller than a real letter size sheet of paper.
How can I make "100%" on the computer screen correspond with "100%" in real life?
Details
This message suggests that I should be investigating the system-wide DPI settings for my monitor. xdpyinfo reports:
dimensions: 1024x768 pixels (271x203 millimeters)
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch
My monitor has a native display resolution of 1024x768 pixels and a diagonal display size of 12.07 inches. PX CALC returns the following information:
DPI: 106.05
Dot Pitch: 0.2395mm
Size: 9.66" × 7.24" (24.53cm × 18.39cm)
What I've tried so far
Running xrandr --dpi 106.05 successfully caused my PDF to appear actual size at 100%, but this effect was lost after rebooting.
To make the setting persistent I tried creating the following /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "ThinkPad X60 LCD"
DisplaySize 245 183
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Monitor "ThinkPad X60 LCD"
EndSection
After re-logging in, /var/log/Xorg.0.log contained
[ 1167.824] (**) intel(0): Display dimensions: (245, 183) mm
[ 1167.824] (**) intel(0): DPI set to (106, 106)
but xdpyinfo still reported
dimensions: 1024x768 pixels (271x203 millimeters)
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch
and "100%" still appeared too small.
Link to XRANDR wiki
Link to making XRANDR changes persistant
