Comment 58 for bug 310353

From what I heard in the desktop meeting and from what Marc mentions it sounds like the Gnome font dialog isn't actually using pts but something else entirely. This probably can't be fixed properly for Jaunty but long term it should be using pts and using them properly being 1 pt == 1/72" and should be the same physical size on all displays with DPI set correctly.

Otherwise what was the point in setting DPI correctly to begin with?

Now the bit about font sizes being different for different classes of display is a real issue and should be addressed at some point. There are at least 3 classes of displays, laptops, hdtvs, and regular desktop monitors. The 3 classes exist due to differences in dpi and viewing distance from the screen, both of which affect the usable font size range. laptops typically have much higher DPI (~ 100-150dpi) than desktop monitors (~ 80-100dpi) which in turn have much higher DPI than HDTVs (~ 30-80dpi). You sit closer to laptops than either other class of display as well. Also since HDTVs DPI is so low you have to have a larger size font just be able to have enough pixels in the font to be usable.