I have two very different Xservers for the same X client host:

$ for D in monarch '    oak'; do xdpyinfo -display $D:0.0 | sed -n
"s/resolution/$D/p"; done
  monarch:    75x75 dots per inch
      oak:    123x126 dots per inch

A font size readable on monarch is illegible on oak; what's comfortable on
oak is Computing for the Blind on monarch.  I control the font sizes for
some applications (nedit, xterm) via .Xdefaults, which knows nothing about
the server's display resolution.  

I suspect I've stumbled on one of those broken-by-design aspects of X?  I
mean, I shouldn't be specifying font *size* based on display resolution;
the server should scale the font such that 9 points appears as 9 points
and 14 points as 14 points.  To display a 10-point font in different sizes
depending on screen resolution is to ignore the meaning of "point".  

That said, is there some accepted way to have the client respond to the
server's properties -- its name, even -- such that different font sizes
are used for different servers/resolutions, something?  

Many thanks.  

--jkl