Display font strangeness in emacs-snapshot

[ross@rosslaird.info (Ross A. Laird)]

After making some changes to my xorg.conf file (Ubuntu Hardy) to get an
external projector working, emacs-snapshot now seems to want to shrink
itself to a tiny window, with tiny fonts, upon startup. Here's what I
changed in xorg.conf:

Section "Screen"

    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Videocard0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "1"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0"
    Option         "metamodes" 
                   "CRT: 1600x1024 +0+0, 
                    DFP: 1920x1200 +0+0; 
                    CRT: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, DFP: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
EndSection

So, my main screen resolution is 1920x1200, and other applications pick
up the font sizes correctly; but emacs-snapshot (GNU Emacs 23.0.60.1
(i486-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.12.9) gives me tiny little text
(about 4 points). The menus show the correct font size (but I assume
those are gtk). In .emacs I have this:

;fonts
(if (>= emacs-major-version 23)
  (set-default-font "DejaVu Sans Mono-9"))

I now have to scale the above all the way up to "DejaVu Sans Mono-15" to get
a readable typeface. Now, I can do this, but it seems strange: why would
emacs refer to something as size 15 when that same type size is called 9
by other applications? And besides, why did this change at all? Emacs
was correctly scaling and showing the fonts before I changed xorg.conf.

Perhaps it's a matter of pixel size vs. point size.

Hints and suggestions are welcome.

Cheers.

Ross


-- 
Ross A. Laird, PhD
www.rosslaird.info