How to use wxWindow::ConvertDialogToPixels

[Davros]

How do I determine initial sizes in "dialog units" rather than pixels?

I see the manual says this about ConvertDialogToPixels:

For the x dimension, the dialog units are multiplied by the average character width and then divided by 4.
For the y dimension, the dialog units are multiplied by the average character height and then divided by 8.

Why divide by 4 or 8? Are these just arbitrary values?

I see ConvertDialogToPixels could be quite useful in scaling windows on different DPI settings. However, how do I arrive suitable dimensions when I am writing my app?

For example, let's suppose I want my window to be approx. 300 pixels wide on my development machine, but also want the window to be scaled suitably on client machines with differing DPIs. Do I just have to arrive at an equivalent width in "dialog units" by trial and error?

As an alternate stratedgy, I could use a #define to specify my development DPI, i.e.

#define BUILDDPI 96

and in my code divide the current screen dpi by this to arrive at a suitable scaling factor. It would have the advantage of yielding a scaling factor of 1 on my development machine, which would make positioning of controls easier.

What's a good DPI scaling stratedgy?

[Cursor]

The DPI (1) is a standard "density of point" measure. For the screen, we must speak about PPI (2) "Pixel per Inch" that is generally 72, 96 or 144.

1 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dpi
2 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixels_per_inch

[Davros]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

>For the screen, we must speak about PPI (2) "Pixel per Inch" that is generally 72, 96 or 144.

While I accept you are right, of course, it certainly is confusing, expecially when my Windows screen settings dialog uses the term "DPI". Hence my confusion.

In any case, my question still stands.

How do I determine initial sizes in "dialog units" rather than pixels?