Created attachment 42928 [details]
2048x1536 144 DPI screenshot of 4.4.2 on openSUSE 11.3 Factory

Note that if this screenshot is viewed at a DPI significantly different from 144 that object sizes will be misleading. If not viewed at close to 144 DPI, making the 1 inch object 1 inch wide and the 5 inch wide object 5 inches wide, one must remember only proportions hold true, and not actual object sizes. For example, displayed at an actual 144 DPI, the panel is less than 5mm tall. If viewed at 96 DPI, it will measure 50% taller than it did when the screenshot was made.

This maybe should be a meta-bug for various objects exhibiting the problem, or maybe it's really a single absence of overall scaling bug. Either way, here are highlights of bad sizes, mostly shown in a screenshot (where everything except web browser window and default text sizes; and except KDE font sizes, which until 11.3 on openSUSE were 10pt, which openSUSE has switched to 9pt, and I've changed back to 10pt; and family which at generic sans serif means DejaVu Sans, but I've changed to the slightly smaller x-height Arial for easier comparability to alternative DTEs that do not include DejaVu in their repertoire, and to the selected Arial for Gecko browser defaults):

1-Base font in Konsole is tiny, a poor default choice, as misc fixed only comes in one size that does not scale.

2-systemsettings window opens to a size that requires scrolling to find all objects, even though it's loaded with whitespace. It should start significantly wider, and slightly taller, which would also make several of its submenus more usable.

3-Panel is clearly much too short to hold icons big enough to be intelligible. It's hard to say if the text sizing is appropriate, as the default theming makes the whole panel tough to perceive as anything more than mud, and the clock invisible.

4-Desktop settings plasma workspace window is too short for comfortable wallpaper selection, causing the image select list scrollspace to resemble Windows' ridiculous preference for scrolling even when a mere 3 items are in a select list. Here almost exactly 3 fit. The window should be tall enough for at least 5 to fit in the list, preferably much more.

5-Konsole window is only about 80 characters wide. At least 100, or better more, by default, would help compensate for so much modern terminal output that commonly cannot fit into 80 chars, such as /dev/disk* partition names & grub kernel lines.

6-Not shown in the screenshot is that if root logs into KDE, panel is only about half screen width instead of maximize.

If everything was sized in em instead of px, then sizing should automatically work well regardless of screen size, or DPI, or user preference whether a larger display should produce more space for more objects, or the same objects displayed larger, or some combination thereof. Clearly that's not the case currently.