Re: HiDPI issues

[drago01 <drago01 gmail com>]

On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 10:43 AM, Narcis Garcia <informatica actiu net> wrote:
> I'm using Gnome 3.8 in wide range of computers (in Trusty) and there is
> a problem with the inverse situation (low resolution): font scale can be
> tweaked, but not the rest of elements (icons, buttons, bars, etc.)
>
>
> El 17/05/15 a les 01:10, Alfredo Hernández ha escrit:
> > I reckon most if these errors are because of GTK+2. All of the issues
> > you've listed seem to be directly related to apps not updated to GTK+3.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Alfredo
> >
> > On 16 May 2015 22:30, "Iban Eguia" <iem10393 gmail com
> > <mailto:iem10393 gmail com>> wrote:
> >
> >     Hi, guys, I've just bought a new computer with HiDPI display, and
> >     I'm experiencing some issues with it. I suppose that most of them
> >     will not be related to Ubuntu GNOME as a distribution, but in any
> >     case, I wanted to sum them up here so that you could tell me if
> >     they're related to the distribution, to GNOME or to specific
> >     applications. And, if it is the case that some of them could be
> >     solved from the distribution itself maybe we could do something
> >     about it, and I include myself, as I'm finishing my IT degree and
> >     maybe I could contribute. So, since I don't want to extend myself
> >     much longer, here I summarize these issues:
> >
> >       * Icons too small in save/load windows: Even if the icons in
> >         Nautilus are fine, in the load/save windows, (such as when I try
> >         to save something from Firefox or I open something in
> >         LibreOffice appear too small, and its difficult to see them
> >         properly.

I have no idea what you mean here those should be fine.

> >       * Icons too small in some applications: In Filezilla or
> >         ProjectLibre, I see that the icons are really small, what leads
> >         to an unpleasant user experience. I think that this is only
> >         related to certain applications, so probably they don't fit as a
> >         bug of the distribution.

Those are indeed application specific. Currently mostly only GTK3
applications support
HIDPI ... QT5 ones do if you set an env var.

> >       * In some circumstances, the cursor changes to Low DPI: For
> >         example, in Tweetdeck in Firefox or in Telegram Desktop, the
> >         cursor, only in some sections changes back to Low DPI and it's
> >         shown really small. I have seen this happen with the zoom
> >         cursor, with the hand cursor and with the text cursor.

Never seen something like this ... did the application override the
cursor (theme)?

> >       * Chrome totally lacks HiDPI support: I guess this should be a bug
> >         report for Google, but as I'm trying to summarize all the errors
> >         I find I include it here.

This is/will be fixed with Chrome 43 (not really a gnome issue).

> >       * Firefox does not adapt by default to HiDPI: I had to change
> >         Firefox settings in about:config so that web pages didn't show
> >         so small.

This is fixed in Firefox 38 (again not really a gnome issue).

> >       * In Skype, all the interface is really small: Apart from being
> >         totally outdated, Skype is not adapted to HiDPI: All the fonts
> >         and interfaces are really small and only adapted to low-DPI. I
> >         understand this is a Microsoft issue.

Fonts should adapt because we set xft-dpi as for the rest yeah ...
they'd probably have to port
it to QT5 to get proper hidpi support.

> >       * Spotify is not adapted to HiDPI: As it happens with Skype, it
> >         has  all the fonts and interfaces only adapted to low-DPI.
> >
> >     Of course I understand that most of these can't be seen as bugs of
> >     the distribution, but I think that should be noted so as to
> >     understand better what is left to do with HiDPI displays both from
> >     the distribution perspective and from the contributors perspective.
> >     In any case, I'll try to report most of them to the respective
> >     developer communities.

Well the way forward for legacy apps that will probably never support
hidpi is to let the compositor do the scaling.
This requires wayland though see
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=728902

Otherwise just file bugs for the applications; the issues you noted
aren't really gnome specific.