High DPI displays

Targets Windows
1

I usually develop on a Mac but have recently purchased a Surface Pro 3 and decided to try to do some Xojo development work on it. The Surface has a (near Retina) high DPI display . The IDE looks terrible on it. Launching the IDE with standard settings results in a blurry (but correctly proportioned) IDE with text that makes my eyes hurt. If I right click the Xojo IDE app icon to get to it’s properties, I can disable it’s DPI scaling which results in clear (but very tiny) text but all of the IDE controls are clipped or have text so small it’s almost impossible to use. The controls in apps created on this display are also awful.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there anything I can do to improve this? As it stands, developing on a high DPI display is next to impossible on Windows 8.1. What I need is an app like Retinizer on the Mac…

2

Hi Garry,

There was a discussion that can be viewed here: Screen Preference

With Windows, there are an extremely large number of different screens from many different manufacturers. Xojo will be releasing a version which resizes text and graphics which will greatly help.

I typically lower the resolution on my Surface Pro to make everything resize correctly. Just make sure the width:height ratio is correct, otherwise text and graphics will appear blurry.

3

well I am afraid this correlates with Retina Support on Mac…

4

@Eugene Dakin Can I ask what resolution you use on the surface? Does it compromise the quality of other apps in your opinion?

5

Hi Garry,

My Surface Pro I is set to 1280 x 800. The Recommended resolution setting is 1920 x 1080, but these old eyes can’t read text at that resolution :slight_smile:

6

And what dpi did you get (both 1920x 1080 and 1280 x 800) ?
Print Screen -> Paste in Paint -> ?
(I use Windows 8.1 screen shots in OS X Preview !)

7

Good morning Emile,

I went to DPI Love which tells me the Dots-per-inch of my screen at different resolutions and here are the results:

  1. 1280 x 800 @ 13.3" screen = 113 DPI
  2. 1920 x 1080 @ 13.3" screen = 166 DPI
8

Hi Eugene,

My MedionAkoya Two-in-One laptop is 1920 x 1080 at 120 dpi. Nice screen shots.

9

Hi Emile,

I made a mistake. After checking wikipedia, the screen size is 10.6". Here are the revised numbers from DPI Love :

  1. 1280 x 800 @ 10.6" = 142 DPI
  2. 1920 x 1080 @ 10.6" = 208 DPI
10

Garry,

I have a surface pro 3 in which I do Xojo development with.

From what I found, keep the resolution at 2160 x 1140 but do the following:

  1. go into control panel / display settings
  2. move the slider on “change the size of all items” to one notch before the last setting of large.

in some applications you use, you may have to increase the text size for viewing.

11

There is no mention of this in the link you provided. Supporting high dpi screens is usually not about resizing text and graphics though. We need to be able to tell the OS that we support running at a higher resolution, supply higher Rez images and have it do the text scaling for us.

12

My apologies for the misinterpretation.

13

it’s amazing that in 2014, IDE does not support high DPI displays! :-((

I am very tempted by the surface pro 3. I was afraid of not being able to put on my knees, but I tried it, and finally it is stable! it’s a great product. :slight_smile:
But Microsoft is so slow to deliver Windows 10! As Windows Phone is superb, as Windows 8 is really bad, even though version 8.1 improves.

It is powerful enough? Which version do you have?

Thank you
olivier

14

Haven’t you downloaded the Tech Preview ? I have been using it since it’s release. It is surprisingly stable and much faster to load than 8.1.

For all intents and purposes, it is available.

15

good news, thank you Michel.

16

See http://windows.com/preview to sign up and download Windows 10 Technical Preview.

That whole thread is amazing, as it shows the high degree of fragmentation concerning high pixel screens.

Apple with Retina simply decided to go 144 dpi and with 2x makes it transparent and relatively easy.

Windows solutions range from variable dpi to variable control sizes in desktop and applications. That promises to be an “interesting” environment for developers :wink:

17

@oliver I went for the i3 model. The hardware is really nice. The problem (coming from a die hard Mac fan) is that Windows 8/8.1 is rubbish. A lot of the high DPI problems I think are Window’s fault rather than Xojo’s (although they’re dragging their heels with high resolution display support including Retina). It’s the little things that annoy me though. Take for instance the on screen keyboard. The predictive text and autocorrect simply do not work (despite them being enabled in settings). It makes it virtually impossible to type on compared to an iPad.