Comments on: High-DPI aware KDE applications

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:28:50 +0000

Are you still working on this? Just added another bug here:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=209977
Unfortunately my request for adding [ui] to the bug description where I noticed have not been followed.

By: jo

jo — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:36:55 +0000

Hello and thank you for all this work. I think that your approach is very effective and intelligent. In facr, I just brought a hdtv and would like to use kde4 on it. As you seem to be very close to the project I hope that my throughts are heard .
First, my girlfriend has a bad sight so it is very important for her (and consequently for me) that the pc is fully useable and not a repellent as it is in our main room.
As other people I think as you it would be wise if all icons could be set at custom size (ok it’s alerady planned)
I also think there is a problem with big fonts and window decorations because the default theme doesn’t adapt very well to big titles.
And at last it would be wise to be able to change mouse cursor size to have a bigger mouse cursor (if option is there, I didn’t find it). I don’t know how all this is anaged by kde and X these days so I didn’t try to modify the corresponding X option (cursor-size or the like)
Also it would be wise to have big buttons on window decoration (proportionate to window decoration height/width).
All of this is only polishing, I think you’re close to perfection and at last thank you.

By: Stefan

Stefan — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:27:21 +0000

Perhaps I have the wrong perspective.

From my perspective I see that I want things to be the same size in pixels as on a larger display, and I approach the issue in that manner, by changing the DPI – indeed it’s the easiest approach – changing all the fonts, and what-not strikes me as difficult, and prone to leave the system feeling inconsistent if some setting is missed.

On the other hand, I suppose one could say that they want smaller physical sizes for their smaller physical display. I suppose in this case the problem is one of poor default sizes on these devices, or a lack of appropriate means of changing a wide range of settings in a coordinated manner.

I apologize if my previous post was overly judgemental or condemning; it was born of my frustration with the way small displays are handled – or more specifically, not. I see a lot of attention being paid to these devices, and I eagerly anticipate much improvement. Thank you for the work you have done, and are continuing to do.

By: kdepepo

kdepepo — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:49:48 +0000

@Stefan, the idea is that you can select a very small font if you want, and icons and spacings should scale accordingly. See the screen shots on this page, they have all been made on a system with a 106 dpi display.

@Peter, please file bug reports for those applications, use “[UI]” in the bug titles.

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:57:31 +0000

Is there any chance someone could do something similar to this with system colors? There are quite a few applications that hardcode colors (some by default, some without alternatives), which can make white-on-black color schemes difficult.

By: Stefan

Stefan — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:41:55 +0000

I feel the current handling of high DPI displays is completely broken. There seems to be this notion that widgets should be displayed at the same actual size on these displays. Nothing could be further from the truth – high DPI displays tend to be small displays. Using additional pixels on high DPI displays eats up valuable screen real-estate. I find it painful to have to artificially specify a DPI of 96 on a netbook so that fonts and interface elements are not ridiculously scaled.

If a high DPI display had the same physical dimensions, it would be wonderful to have scaled fonts and interfaces – having the same dimensions but higher resolution. Unfortunately I have never found this to be the case.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:00:57 +0000

You are my hero. After KDE4 has improved a lot the problems surronding small icons and the waste of space if you use small icons and fonts, this problem is among my most hated. I have request the change of the short description to add [UI] as you wished.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=163283
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=170645
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171914

There is also a bug report for the icon size in the settings of some applications like Akregator, Kmail, Amarok. But I could not find it.

By: Mary Ellen Foster

Mary Ellen Foster — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:40:45 +0000

I’m glad about this — I’ve had issues with KDE and high-DPI displays for a while (my laptop is about 145×145, and my netbook 135×135). My biggest issue is that kwin itself seems to use a different DPI than the apps, so if (for example) I choose a font for the window title bar, I need to choose a few sizes bigger than what I really want for it to render properly. Are you planning to address this?

Relevant bugs:
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=468451
- http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=179962