What do you think we should do about the release-critical DPI bug? We need a decision on a course of action.

One of the changes we're bringing in this release is changing the definition of px from 90 dpi to 96 dpi, but a consequence of this is that documents created in 0.91 or earlier will become mis-scaled if used in 0.92. This is tracked in the following bug report:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1389723

This is a release-critical bug, the sort that is likely to become a thorn in our side in the near to mid term as users start running into it more and more. Longer term it will diminish as our users move to newer versions, but I imagine it'll take multiple years before it goes away completely.

I don't think we should consider reverting the change; it was introduced pretty early on this development cycle so backing it out could cause secondary bugs to crop up. Also, it's a change that has to be done, so if we don't do it this release we'll have to go through all the trouble again next release anyway.

One proposed approach is to detect the affected files on load and display a warning with a recommendation to convert the file manually. Javier has posted a conversion tool that could be made use of; it's received a fair bit of testing but there may be some remaining corner cases to sort out; on the plus side with it being a discrete utility fixes could be rolled out for it without needing full Inkscape releases.

The other proposed approach would be for Inkscape to internally convert files, so that no warning is needed. In theory this would provide a better user experience, but is going to require a lot more developer effort and thorough testing. I'm doubtful that all of this can be done adequately within the timeframe we're looking at for the release.

Both approaches also require a mechanism to detect affected files, which sounds like it may be the tricky part here, as our SVG documents haven't had versioning information we could rely on for this case.

Do you have thoughts on other ways to address this issue? Do you have a strong opinion on whether for this release we should use the expedient approach or else postpone the release until the more user-friendly approach can be developed? Or should we reconsider a revert of the DPI switch so we can get the release out and re-enable it post-release in hopes the issues can be worked out?

Bryce