User:Ctag/HiDPI
HiDPI / High DPI / Retina / 4k
The notes below cover my knowledge of setting up applications to work with HiDPI.
X11 DPI
| Status: works |
With the intel video driver (bumblebee) the screen dpi is not automatically discovered, so I set it manually (by physically measuring the screen).
$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "eDP1"
DisplaySize 380 210 # in mm <-- THIS LINE
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection
[...]
Restart X, and then check the configuration:
$ xdpyinfo
screen #0: dimensions: 3840x2160 pixels (380x210 millimeters) resolution: 257x261 dots per inch
Once this is configured properly several programs (such as Chromium) will automatically begin resizing properly (or at least a little better).
Xft / Xresources
| Status: Holy Grail |
https://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/xtc2001/xft.pdf (page 8, table 3)
https://keithp.com/~keithp/render/Xft.tutorial
Even after making sure X knows what the screen DPI is, a lot of tertiary fonts still render too small. These are things like context menus on terminals, or menus on taskbar icons. Setting the Xft DPI appears to help with most of them.
$ cat ~/.Xresources
XTerm*renderFont: true XTerm*faceName: VeraMono XTerm*faceSize: 10 Xft.dpi: 261 # <-- Corrects font size Xft.autohint: 0 Xft.antialias: true Xft.rgba: rgb Xft.hinting: true Xft.hintstyle: hintslight Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
tty / console font
| Status: works |
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts#Console_fonts
This affects TTY virtual terminal fonts, as well as a few GUI programs (XTerm).
My config:
/etc/vconsole.conf
KEYMAP=us FONT=ter-v32n FONT_MAP=8859-1
i3 window manager / i3wm
| Status: works |
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/31d0wp/i3_and_hidpi_display_everything_is_to_tiny/cq1x33k/
https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/1198
It looks like i3 properly handles the X server DPI, but you have to set a Pango font.
$ cat ~/.i3/config
[...] # font for window titles. ISO 10646 = Unicode #font -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-C-70-iso10646-1 # <-- Old font font pango: Ubuntu Mono 10 # <-- HiDPI font [...]
LightDM (GTK)
| Status: works |
/etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf
[greeter] [...] xft-dpi=261 [...]
Blender
| Status: works |
http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/27016/make-blender-usable-on-high-resolution-screen
I followed the selected answer on the above link step by step.
Chromium
| Status: works |
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#Chromium_.2F_Google_Chrome
Chromium actually works out of the box once the X server DPI is properly configured. But it actually appears to over-compensate in my case, and the UI is uncomfortably large. To fix this, follow the instructions below.
Edit the desktop file to include a parameter that isn't listed in the man page. The '2' in this case can be replaced with whatever real number suites your needs (e.g. --force-device-scale-factor=1.75).
/usr/share/applications/chromium.desktop
Exec=chromium --force-device-scale-factor=2 %U
Brackets
| Status: works, but is a kludge |
https://github.com/adobe/brackets/issues/8059#issuecomment-182322189
Install the theme/plugin and it'll warp the window into looking OK.
Atom
| Status: works |
https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/3826
Set `--force-device-scale-factor=1.75` in the .desktop file.
Slack
| Status: works |
Worked completely out of the box.
Dunst / Send-Notify
| Status: Works |
Dunst doesn't automatically respect DPI, but the config file can manually specify a larger font.
~/.config/dunst/dunstrc
[global]
#font = Monospace 10
font = Ubuntu Mono 16
[...]
Arduino IDE
| Status: Works |
https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/pull/4376
As of version 1.8.0:
Go to File>Preferences>Interface Scale and set it to whatever you want.
GRUB
| Status: mostly works |
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#GRUB
I followed the wiki section step for step. It works well, except that text before the Grub menu (dm-crypt prompt) and early boot (before kms?) is still small. See: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=219426
Terminator
| Status: works (with Xft configured) |
With Xft (everything just works)
Without Xft (ui elements too small)
Change the font in Preferences>Profiles>General. Other UI elements are not properly resized.
Inkscape
| Status: partially works (in version 0.92) |
Go to Preferences>Interface and set the icons to 'Larger'. Only affects most icons, not all of them.
PCmanFM
| Status: works, but looks awful |
The interface just looks bad, with some text resizing appropriately, and some buttons/ui elements not resizing. Also, the largest thumbnail setting is tiny.
Evince / Document Viewer
| Status: works (mostly) |
With the Xft DPI workaround, UI text is properly displayed. Buttons are still too small, but it's survivable.
Gimp
| Status: almost works |
http://www.gimp-forum.net/Thread-GIMP-2-8-Large-size-Icons-Themes
This icon theme works, but the next time gimp is run, it segfaults until the theme is removed from ~/.gimp-2.8/gimprc
Eclipse
| Status: somewhat works |
Eclipse 2018.12 (Platform 4.10)+
https://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/news/4.10/platform.php#gtk2-removal
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#GDK_3_(GTK_3)
Starting with platform 4.10, Eclipse only supports GDK3 (GTK3). With this change the general recommendations around GDK3 apply and render both fonts and icons useable.
$ export GDK_SCALE=2 $ export GDK_DPI_SCALE=0.5
Eclipse Neon
https://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/news/4.6/platform.php#swt-autoscale-tweaks
http://askubuntu.com/questions/777411/eclipse-neon-icon-size-in-ubuntu-16-04-hidpi
Eclipse Neon is touted as supporting hidpi, but it doesn't work on my system.
To fix icons
/usr/lib/eclipse/eclipse.ini
[...] -Dswt.autoScale=200
To fix fonts
Open Window>Preferences and edit the fonts in General>Appearance>Colors and Fonts.
UI fonts
Most UI fonts resize with the User:Ctag#Xft_.2F_Xresources workaround.
Code::Blocks
| Status: somewhat works |
with the User:Ctag#Xft_.2F_Xresources workaround, text is displayed well in most areas of the UI. Buttons are still too small.
Qt Creator
| Status: Works |
Adapted fix from [Github bug report].
I copied /usr/share/applications/org.qt-project.qtcreator.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications and then edited it such that:
... Exec=env QT_SCALE_FACTOR=1 env QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=0 env QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS=1.75 qtcreator %F ...
Fontconfig
| Status: unknown |
https://eev.ee/blog/2015/05/20/i-stared-into-the-fontconfig-and-the-fontconfig-stared-back-at-me/
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=212533
http://www.jaysonrowe.com/2013/04/font-configuration-in-arch-linux.html
I don't know if this helps, but here's my config:
$ cat ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<match target="pattern">
<edit name="dpi" mode="assign">
<double>261</double>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="rgba">
<const>rgb</const>
</edit>
<edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
<edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle">
<const>hintslight</const>
</edit>
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
<edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter">
<const>lcddefault</const>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>
Infinality
| Status: not used |
It looks like there's no progress on either Infinality or the bohoomil patches.
Spotify
| Status: works (with an argument) |
Running Spotify with spotify --force-device-scale-factor=2.0 should fix it. You can increase the the scale factor as needed.