High PPI/DPI support

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High PPI/DPI support

Postby baZzz » Tue Jan 07, 2014 11:55 pm

I just bought a Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 which has a whopping resolution of 3200x1800 on a 13" screen. This results in 276 PPI. Although it looks beautiful, WeBuilder just got completely useless. :( Because it doesn't scale (the display setting is at 200% by default), it's absolutely unreadable and I literally need a magnifier in order to read the text. The only solution for me is to use the laptop at a resolution of 1600x900, but to be honest, that feels like a bit of a waste. With more high resolution screens on the horizon, are there any plans for supporting these in the near future?
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby Karlis » Wed Jan 08, 2014 1:10 pm

Frankly, to my opinion, such resolutions on so tiny screens are a ridiculous idea, Windows was initially never designed for this purpose and I'm sure, so do many apps. Even if we fix our software, you will run into this all the time. I do not doubt it looks as pretty as Retina screens on Apple, but I am not sure such environment on Windows is good for development work.

That said, customer is the king, so we will surely look into this when designing the next generation of WeBuilder products, but I can not promise anything at this time. I do remember, we adjusted the main screen to work on higher DPI, but due to poor built-in Windows and Delphi support for scaling, it is utterly difficult to address every place in the app to fit not just high DPI, but outrageously high DPI never seen before.

For now, you can:
1) Increase editor font size, if necessary
2) Right-click toolbar, click Customize -> Options and click "Large icons"
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby baZzz » Mon Jan 13, 2014 3:37 pm

Hi Karlis,

First of all, thanks for the speedy reply! I do not fully agree with your arguments to be honest. You say that Windows wasn't initially designed for high res displays. It probably wasn't initially, but since the introduction of Windows 8 it clearly is. As you say yourself, it looks pretty, so why wouldn't they? This is really nothing new, I remember working on 640x480 res screens. Since then resolutions have gradually increased and nowadays full HD (1920x1080) is the standard and I just happen to have bought a laptop with a next generation screen. You probably follow CES and the likes as well, so you know 4K screens have been introduced over a year ago already and are now becoming more and more affordable. 8K screens are already introduced. Whether it's a tiny screen such as a phone or a big ass screen such as a TV, resolutions will continue to increase as long as they human eye can tell the difference. So I clearly disagree with you and I don't find this ridiculous; it's evolution. I do think Microsoft could have done a better job though, at scaling non optimised applications, but that's a whole different discussion and one neither of us can do anything about unfortunately. (Apple did a better job with OSX I believe, but WeBuilder was probably the biggest reason why I wanted to stick with Windows in the first place.)

As for your argument whether this is not well suited for development work, I don't agree either. :-) I believe you have to develop for the devices that your users will be using. This also includes high res screens. For now, I'll admit that they are still the minority, but I don't believe this will last for long. Already, almost every current phone and tablet has a similar high DPI and with the mobile market still growing rapidly, there will be more and more users consuming the stuff we develop on these mobile devices. So the development process (in terms of testing) will only get easier if you have a screen similar to the one of your users.

All this being said, I appreciate that you take the time to look into this. For now, I followed your advice, but the explorer windows on the sides don't scale, so these are still useless. :-( I'll probably have to return the laptop, or go back to a 1600x900 resolution and waste 75% of my pixels. That's the downside of being an early adopter I guess... ;-)
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby Karlis » Mon Jan 13, 2014 4:25 pm

Mostly I do agree with what you said, I do apologize I was a bit sarcastic, and the new screens are nice, it is just that while on Apple everything automagically works cool on the modern screens, on Windows it does not... This means, the adaptation of these technologies is going painfully and bumpy. The means are there, but developers are put into situation where they have to do a humongus overhaul in order to support this.

You must understand our situation - the development environment we have used to build WeBuilder - Delphi does not support this well (it has support for scaling, but that works erratially) and factoring in that we have 200+ forms, manual scaling of each form would be an undertaking that would simply bankrupt us as we do not have the resources for this type of change. Windows GUI is not as easy as HTML + CSS if you have to do it manually and scalably.

I guess what we will try to do is as always do the best we can with what we have. We will look into this when working on version 2015 and try to get it right at least to some degree as, clearly, doing nothing is not an option and we believe, we can make it at least usable (if not pretty).
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby mads » Wed Mar 19, 2014 4:24 pm

hi karlis
your reply leaves one to hope that things will be better with the new version. i just want to add my support for baZzz point as i have also just bought a lenovo yoga pro 2 for working while on the road - and i really enjoy the great resolution the laptop offers. so we wait - and yours is not the only software with the same problem with this kind of resolution.
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby mads » Thu Dec 11, 2014 8:44 pm

webuilder 2015 - no go. unfortunately it is still the same old story: either change screen resolution or use a magnifying glass to work on a hi-res laptop.

i had high hopes! :(
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby Aivars » Fri Dec 12, 2014 12:16 am

There were improvements, I've seen it with my own eyes. Maybe you simply need to increase the font size via menu Options -> Prefrences -> Text Editor -> Choose Editor Font?
One thing that doesn't behave well with high DPI is the toolbar, but you can right-click the toolbar -> Customize -> Options -> Large icons.
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby mads » Wed Jan 21, 2015 6:06 pm

sorry for late reply

i have seen these improvements, thank you. where the problems arise are in library (see image below) and file explorer.
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby Aivars » Fri Jan 23, 2015 12:33 pm

I'll add this to issues.
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby mads » Sun Apr 05, 2015 1:14 pm

Aivars wrote:I'll add this to issues.


thanks folks - you did it! version 13.2.0.164 looks really good! :D
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby jobowo » Sun Jan 15, 2017 2:29 am

This discussion seems to be going in several threads. I initially came across a promise to have this fixed in 2016 version but now can't find that thread so will respond here.

The promised fix hasn't happened--at least in the latest 2016 version that I downloaded--so I'm hoping that I can get an answer here on WHEN this issue is going to be fixed in RapidPHP.

The issue is that on the new generation of Windows high-resolution laptops, the preview screen is showing up postage-stamp sized. Yes, I have the partial rescue of changing the text-editor font-size, and large icons for toolbars, but that doesn't change a preview that I have to view through a magnifying glass or the jumbled windows here and there.

Karlis, you've done a great job with this product but I agree with others: this fix, no matter how much of a problem at your end, has to be fixed or we can't use the product on the new computers. I'm already having to look at alternative IDE's and I've been with RPHP for a lot of years.

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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby Aivars » Sun Jan 15, 2017 11:20 am

We are fixing High-DPI issues one by one and 2016 version has already fixed a lot of them. The next version will be even better. High-DPI is a priority for us.
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby jobowo » Sun Jan 22, 2017 3:25 am

Thanks for the reply Aivars. Must be a nightmare at your end. But I downloaded the latest 2016 version a couple of weeks back and didn't see any fix for the major (postage stamp preview) problem on an Asus Zenbook. After I downloaded and installed about half a dozen alternatives to RPHP, I couldn't find anything I liked that didn't require a college degree to unravel (I already have one of those and don't need another). For the moment have decided to delay the purchase of a new computer (I took the Asus back) but it would be nice to get an approximate date when RPHP will come up to speed on this issue.
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby pmk65 » Tue Jan 16, 2018 3:27 pm

If there's still problems, maybe this could fix it?
(I don't have a high resolution screen myself, so I can't test this.)

https://winaero.com/blog/how-to-fix-apps-that-look-small-on-high-dpi-and-high-resolution-displays/
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Re: High PPI/DPI support

Postby Aivars » Tue Jan 16, 2018 7:40 pm

That is a least-resort solution, the applications look really terrible on Surface if you use that :)
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