Tgif FAQ - Font Sizes

If you want to use large fonts, you can add the following line to your X resource file (such as ~/.Xdefaults):

Tgif.FontSizes: 8 10 11 12 13 14 17 20 24 25 34 38 40 44 48 64

Please also use Tgif.InitialFontSize to specify the initial font size to use if 14 is not in the specified font sizes.

The short answer is that the font size you see in tgif's Font Menu is not in points. It is the size of X fonts. If you like to see point sizes in the Font Menu and you are running tgif-4.x, you can set the following X default:

Tgif.ShowFontSizeInPoints: true

Tgif uses 128 pixels/inch and PostScript uses 72 points/inch. The difference you see is 128/72 which is about 178%. I chose 128 long long time ago so I can do shifts instead of multiplications/divisions to speed up computation. It was probably the right thing to when we only have SUN3's and slow 486's. Now, it's too late to change.

One quick way to get around the problem is to just set the reduction/magnification to 178% (which is approximately 128/72). This can be done by selecting SetReduction() under the Layout Menu or setting the following X default:

Tgif.PercentPrintReduction: 178

This effectively blows everything up in PS by 178%.