ASP 2.2 Linux with QHD - Still almost unusable

[42matthew]

" improvements for high DPI displays" listed on the release page, but menus etc are still very tiny and hard to read.

Is there a setting to make the menus larger that I cannot find?
"Make icons smaller" is unchecked, can't find any other setting that seems related at all.

I'm using Ubuntu Gnome 14.10 on a Dell XPS 13 with 3200x1800.

[afx]

Out of curiosity, what does

Code: Select all

xdpyinfo|egrep resolution

report?

cheers
afx

[42matthew]

$ xdpyinfo|egrep resolution
resolution: 96x96 dots per inch

[afx]

Ok, that seems utterly wrong for a QHD display...
Make sure the DPI are set right. Otherwise fonts will never look ok.

cheers
afx

[42matthew]

Below are two pics, one of the Corel menus and a second showing the menu for gedit. I included the same top bar in both for reference - you can see the text for Corel is much smaller than that showing in Aftershot.

Since 90% of all programs scale properly, currently I only have 2 other programs where menus are an issue (Chromium and Dbeaver), I'm not sure what I would need to change. In the Gnome tweak tool the scaling factor is set to 1, reducing it to .75 didn't change the effect of the xdpyinfo|egrep resolution cmd, or effect the Corel menus.

I've also been looking for information about the DPI - and found this command which shows different that the previous:

xrdb -query | grep dpi
Xft.dpi: 192

This command does show a different result when I adjust the scaling factor (144 when scaling set to .75)


Gedit menus:



Aftershot:

[afx]

he question is, what does Qt use, the information from Xft or from the X server?
As long as the X server reports some probably hard coded nonsense, it is a bit optimistic to expect applications to guess what is really going on.

cheers
afx

[42matthew]

I don't really think it's optimistic for a $70 program to behave as well as the many many free programs I have installed, on what is one of the largest linux distributions. I would actually think it's reasonable. It would be different if this was either free/open source or I was doing some hack to get it to work instead of buying it for a supported OS.

I'm not knowledgeable about how programs interact with x-server/QT etc though so I'll research that if that is what may be the culprit.

[afx]

How about simply setting your X server correctly and testing it?
It works fine on my 144PPI laptop. But my X server reports the correct value...

cheers
afx

[42matthew]

well for starters I have no idea how to do that But am googling right now.

[afx]

One used to be able to set up something like this in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

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Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    Option    "UseEdidDpi"  "FALSE"
    Option         "DPI"  "144 x 144"
    ... And whatever else is there ....
EndSection

But with modern dynamic X servers it is a bit of a PITA....
No idea where they want it then. If you don't use standard drivers but the OEM ones form Nvidia or AMD, they might have some special config for this.

cheers
afx

[42matthew]

Just a followup - I haven't been able to find a solution yet, but have been travelling and haven't had much time yet. Will post anything I find in the next couple of days.

Ubuntu does have an upgrade to 15.04 available, I've been holding off on doing it because of travel but will try that soon as well if I don't find another option.

If anyone has any ideas for what to specifically look for though (adjusting ppi settings, looking into Qt are new information for me already), and I'll add those to the search.

If anyone reads this and has a QHD display where the menus in Corel are fine - I'd love to know your distro, DE etc as well.