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Switching to Qt isn't automatically a slam dunk on Windows. I can tell when an app uses Qt because it opens in a microscopic window on my Surface. VLC users ha

Switching to Qt isn't automatically a slam dunk on Windows. I can tell when an app uses Qt because it opens in a microscopic window on my Surface. VLC users have been waiting on a fix for Qt-related fractional DPI scaling issues on Windows for years.

joezydeco 7y ago
All Qt developers have. I wouldn’t put all the blame squarely on Qt. Windows high DPI support is just awful on top of Qt’s neglect. Have you ever hooked a high-DPI laptop to a low-DPI second monitor? What a freaking headache that is. Say what you want about MacBook owners being brand snobs, but they never have to deal with this nonsense.
- danudey 7y ago
  I have a Windows laptop for work (my first time using Windows as a daily driver since I think 2003), and wow is it awful. Everything, everything, looks scaled and blurry. Apps, installers, widgets, menus, everything. It's amazing how fundamentally terrible everything is, all the time. Now that I think about it though, my first experience with Windows scaling was the text scaling in (I think) Windows 7. I had it set to 120% because I had my computer hooked up to my TV, but a game I was trying to play (SWTOR) would crash on launch every time if the text scaling wasn't set to 100%, making the text in Windows unreadable unless I went up to the TV. I'm not sure if Microsoft just can't get their shit together at all, if getting their shit together would break too many apps, or if they have their shit together but Windows app developers are all wildly incompetent.
  - jamesgeck0 7y ago
    > Everything, everything, looks scaled and blurry That's definitely not the normal experience. I only see this in specific applications that either predate DPI scaling or have poor DPI scaling support. Are you running your display at a non-native resolution or something? > or if they have their shit together but Windows app developers are all wildly incompetent. Game developers specifically seem to have an issue dealing with slightly unusual situations. I've seen games have issues with plugging in controllers after the game has started, the primary sound output changing mid-game, the user alt-tabbing, a second monitor existing (!), etc.
  - Joeri 7y ago
    It sounds like you are on a non-native resolution because most apps should be fine on your primary screen at least. Contrary to macos you should only ever run a windows display at its native resolution (in macos this is “default for this display”), and use the scaling settings to make things the right size (typically 125% or 150%). The OS fully supports mixed dpi, but many apps haven’t been updated. There are three categories: (1) apps that are fully up to date and always look right, a minority that includes office 365 but not office 2016; (2) apps that use the older scaling api’s and only look right on the primary screen at login (so to get them to look good on another screen you need to logout, switch primary, and login) which is the majority of apps; and (3) apps that look blurry on anything not 100% scaling (96 dpi), a minority which still includes most installers for some reason. Microsoft pushed more of the work to developers because they can’t assume the hardware is powerful enough to do what apple did: render everything in a buffer at a multiple and scale it down to the display’s resolution.
    - chipperyman573 7y ago
      MacOS renders everything at the highest resolution and then downscales? Does that mean there are no performance benefits from using a lower resolution (or even potentially a performance hit from the downscaling)?
      - merb 7y ago
        yes. but also the graphics library and windows library is also a little bit better than on windows.
      - vladvasiliu 7y ago
        My experience with an older MBP (Late 2013 15" with dedicated GPU) is that there's a performance hit for non integer scaling. I have an external 4K display that works flawlessly if I set it to default (that is 3840x2160 with 200% scaling). If I disable scaling completely (3840x2160 with 100% scaling) it still works well, but the text is a bit too small. With anything in between and there's a noticeable lag. Interestingly enough, if the internal display uses non integer scaling (I sometimes use 1920x1200) with integer scaling on the external screen it still works ok. I think it's related to the fact that MacOS draws everything at 200%, and using a non-integer scale over 1920x1080 ends up with a bigger resolution than 4k, whereas 4k at 100% is still 4k.
  - izacus 7y ago
    Would you mind listing what "EVERYTHING" in your list is? Because I'm also using a Windows laptop for work, with 125% / 150% scaling on my laptop (fullHD on 13" + 4K external screen on 125%) and it's very far from "everything". All the browsers are fine, IntelliJ tools are fine, terminal tools are fine, all UWP apps are fine, Electron apps are fine, chat aps are fine... so can you please explain what this "everything" is?
- akiselev 7y ago
  As someone who regularly uses a 15" MacBook Pro (for work) and a workstation desktop + Thinkpad X1 Extreme with Windows 10/several Linux distros (for hardware and software personal projects, respectively) with lots of expensive brand hardware for both laptops, I loathe them all with a passion. MacBooks get the hardware DPI consistency sort of right, but multimonitor support is still flaming garbage to the point where I have to run caffeine 24/7 and use rigid window manager layouts configured per scenario (coding at my desk, pair programming at someone else's desk, meeting, presentation, etc.) to be able to efficiently context switch between the modes and keep the screensaver from mutilating my layout. Windows gets the window layout consistency between monitor configurations mostly right if you ignore chrome and Electron but multi-DPI support is flaming garbage. Linux is completely hit or miss for me depending on the monitor and drivers I've got configured but in a desktop you can at least make Linux reliably not flaming garbage. I just now realized that my 20th anniversary with computing must have passed in the last few months and looking back, all I can remember is how much every operating system I've ever used has gotten in my way. /rant
  - tomc1985 7y ago
    I have been running two 1440p displays on my Retina (on 150% scale) laptop and they've been playing nicely for as long as I've had this job. It works quite well for me, no need to run any special WM programs except for Divvy Similarly for grandparent post, VLC runs 100% fine on my 150% scaling Win10 laptop with a 4K screen These bugs must be somewhat transient...
    - jamesgeck0 7y ago
      I dunno. I've got 150% scaling on my Surface Go with a 10 inch screen. The VLC UI is a mixture of partially scaled elements for me right now: https://imgur.com/a/1j4wWUd https://imgur.com/a/1j4wWUd There's a registry option to double the scaling of Qt widgets, but that makes everything too big.
  - zeta0134 7y ago
    If you're willing to switch desktop environments, Cinnamon seems to at least consistently remember monitor layouts between different configurations. Mixed DPI is still garbage though; I think it's basically a poor underlying model with X11, but I'm no expert on the implementation.
- GordonS 7y ago
  > Have you ever hooked a high-DPI laptop to a low-DPI second monitor? What a freaking headache that is. Erm, yes, and on Windows 10 it works just fine. > Say what you want about MacBook owners being brand snobs, but they never have to deal with this nonsense Not true, I think Windows 10's high-DPI support is fantastic - yes, better than MacOS. At home I have a landscape 3K monitor daisychained to a portrait 1980x1200 monitor, and it works flawlessly on Windows 10 with both my desktop and 2 work laptops. It works on MacOS, until it doesn't - it sometimes crashes when I switch between the MBP screen and the external screens. I have a similar setup at the office, but with 2 portrait displays - I have the same issue with my MBP. The only OS where I have to deal with this nonsense is MacOS.
  - gecko 7y ago
    I agree that Windows 10 is better, but I would note that it’s only truly good for apps updated to the Windows 10 API (which differs from the Windows 8.1 one, which differed from 8.0), so I haven’t seen wide support outside whatever we’re calling UWP apps these days.
    - GordonS 7y ago
      I don't use any "Windows App Store Apps" if that's what you mean by UWP apps (I did a lot of Windows desktop dev on WinForms, then some on WPF, but haven't kept up since then). But everything I use seems to work just fine on Windows 10 across multiple monitors - Office, Visual Studio, Rider and a whole host of small applications (many old) that I doubt did anything specific to enable high DPI support.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        UWP is the modern replacement for Win32, stuck in Windows XP cryogenic state, it is not only for the store since MSIX package format got released two years ago. Now Win32 and UWP are just two complementary sandboxed execution models, more so when Windows 10X gets released.
jchw 7y ago
Huh? I know for a fact Qt 5 itself supports fractional scaling because it works on Linux and especially KDE. I don’t get why things wouldn’t work? https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/highdpi.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/highdpi.html
justinclift 7y ago
Yeah.. Also, Dark Mode support on windows (and others) still doesn't work properly, though there are workarounds. For Windows at least, the Dark Mode support in Qt seems to have someone now assigned to the task (last few days). So it might be better with the next major release.
dagmx 7y ago
The DPI Scaling may be down to using earlier versions of Qt or being misconfigured. https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/highdpi.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/highdpi.html I've used Qt successfully here with different DPI, and it works well once configured for the most part. It's still not perfect on Windows, but it's a lot better than it used to be when set up properly.
FraKtus 7y ago
VLC does not look like using Qt, at least on macOS.

joezydeco 7y ago

All Qt developers have. I wouldn’t put all the blame squarely on Qt. Windows high DPI support is just awful on top of Qt’s neglect. Have you ever hooked a high-DPI laptop to a low-DPI second monitor? What a freaking headache that is. Say what you want about MacBook owners being brand snobs, but they never have to deal with this nonsense.

danudey 7y ago
I have a Windows laptop for work (my first time using Windows as a daily driver since I think 2003), and wow is it awful. Everything, everything, looks scaled and blurry. Apps, installers, widgets, menus, everything. It's amazing how fundamentally terrible everything is, all the time. Now that I think about it though, my first experience with Windows scaling was the text scaling in (I think) Windows 7. I had it set to 120% because I had my computer hooked up to my TV, but a game I was trying to play (SWTOR) would crash on launch every time if the text scaling wasn't set to 100%, making the text in Windows unreadable unless I went up to the TV. I'm not sure if Microsoft just can't get their shit together at all, if getting their shit together would break too many apps, or if they have their shit together but Windows app developers are all wildly incompetent.
- jamesgeck0 7y ago
  > Everything, everything, looks scaled and blurry That's definitely not the normal experience. I only see this in specific applications that either predate DPI scaling or have poor DPI scaling support. Are you running your display at a non-native resolution or something? > or if they have their shit together but Windows app developers are all wildly incompetent. Game developers specifically seem to have an issue dealing with slightly unusual situations. I've seen games have issues with plugging in controllers after the game has started, the primary sound output changing mid-game, the user alt-tabbing, a second monitor existing (!), etc.
- Joeri 7y ago
  It sounds like you are on a non-native resolution because most apps should be fine on your primary screen at least. Contrary to macos you should only ever run a windows display at its native resolution (in macos this is “default for this display”), and use the scaling settings to make things the right size (typically 125% or 150%). The OS fully supports mixed dpi, but many apps haven’t been updated. There are three categories: (1) apps that are fully up to date and always look right, a minority that includes office 365 but not office 2016; (2) apps that use the older scaling api’s and only look right on the primary screen at login (so to get them to look good on another screen you need to logout, switch primary, and login) which is the majority of apps; and (3) apps that look blurry on anything not 100% scaling (96 dpi), a minority which still includes most installers for some reason. Microsoft pushed more of the work to developers because they can’t assume the hardware is powerful enough to do what apple did: render everything in a buffer at a multiple and scale it down to the display’s resolution.
  - chipperyman573 7y ago
    MacOS renders everything at the highest resolution and then downscales? Does that mean there are no performance benefits from using a lower resolution (or even potentially a performance hit from the downscaling)?
    - merb 7y ago
      yes. but also the graphics library and windows library is also a little bit better than on windows.
    - vladvasiliu 7y ago
      My experience with an older MBP (Late 2013 15" with dedicated GPU) is that there's a performance hit for non integer scaling. I have an external 4K display that works flawlessly if I set it to default (that is 3840x2160 with 200% scaling). If I disable scaling completely (3840x2160 with 100% scaling) it still works well, but the text is a bit too small. With anything in between and there's a noticeable lag. Interestingly enough, if the internal display uses non integer scaling (I sometimes use 1920x1200) with integer scaling on the external screen it still works ok. I think it's related to the fact that MacOS draws everything at 200%, and using a non-integer scale over 1920x1080 ends up with a bigger resolution than 4k, whereas 4k at 100% is still 4k.
- izacus 7y ago
  Would you mind listing what "EVERYTHING" in your list is? Because I'm also using a Windows laptop for work, with 125% / 150% scaling on my laptop (fullHD on 13" + 4K external screen on 125%) and it's very far from "everything". All the browsers are fine, IntelliJ tools are fine, terminal tools are fine, all UWP apps are fine, Electron apps are fine, chat aps are fine... so can you please explain what this "everything" is?
akiselev 7y ago
As someone who regularly uses a 15" MacBook Pro (for work) and a workstation desktop + Thinkpad X1 Extreme with Windows 10/several Linux distros (for hardware and software personal projects, respectively) with lots of expensive brand hardware for both laptops, I loathe them all with a passion. MacBooks get the hardware DPI consistency sort of right, but multimonitor support is still flaming garbage to the point where I have to run caffeine 24/7 and use rigid window manager layouts configured per scenario (coding at my desk, pair programming at someone else's desk, meeting, presentation, etc.) to be able to efficiently context switch between the modes and keep the screensaver from mutilating my layout. Windows gets the window layout consistency between monitor configurations mostly right if you ignore chrome and Electron but multi-DPI support is flaming garbage. Linux is completely hit or miss for me depending on the monitor and drivers I've got configured but in a desktop you can at least make Linux reliably not flaming garbage. I just now realized that my 20th anniversary with computing must have passed in the last few months and looking back, all I can remember is how much every operating system I've ever used has gotten in my way. /rant
- tomc1985 7y ago
  I have been running two 1440p displays on my Retina (on 150% scale) laptop and they've been playing nicely for as long as I've had this job. It works quite well for me, no need to run any special WM programs except for Divvy Similarly for grandparent post, VLC runs 100% fine on my 150% scaling Win10 laptop with a 4K screen These bugs must be somewhat transient...
  - jamesgeck0 7y ago
    I dunno. I've got 150% scaling on my Surface Go with a 10 inch screen. The VLC UI is a mixture of partially scaled elements for me right now: https://imgur.com/a/1j4wWUd https://imgur.com/a/1j4wWUd There's a registry option to double the scaling of Qt widgets, but that makes everything too big.
- zeta0134 7y ago
  If you're willing to switch desktop environments, Cinnamon seems to at least consistently remember monitor layouts between different configurations. Mixed DPI is still garbage though; I think it's basically a poor underlying model with X11, but I'm no expert on the implementation.
GordonS 7y ago
> Have you ever hooked a high-DPI laptop to a low-DPI second monitor? What a freaking headache that is. Erm, yes, and on Windows 10 it works just fine. > Say what you want about MacBook owners being brand snobs, but they never have to deal with this nonsense Not true, I think Windows 10's high-DPI support is fantastic - yes, better than MacOS. At home I have a landscape 3K monitor daisychained to a portrait 1980x1200 monitor, and it works flawlessly on Windows 10 with both my desktop and 2 work laptops. It works on MacOS, until it doesn't - it sometimes crashes when I switch between the MBP screen and the external screens. I have a similar setup at the office, but with 2 portrait displays - I have the same issue with my MBP. The only OS where I have to deal with this nonsense is MacOS.
- gecko 7y ago
  I agree that Windows 10 is better, but I would note that it’s only truly good for apps updated to the Windows 10 API (which differs from the Windows 8.1 one, which differed from 8.0), so I haven’t seen wide support outside whatever we’re calling UWP apps these days.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    I don't use any "Windows App Store Apps" if that's what you mean by UWP apps (I did a lot of Windows desktop dev on WinForms, then some on WPF, but haven't kept up since then). But everything I use seems to work just fine on Windows 10 across multiple monitors - Office, Visual Studio, Rider and a whole host of small applications (many old) that I doubt did anything specific to enable high DPI support.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      UWP is the modern replacement for Win32, stuck in Windows XP cryogenic state, it is not only for the store since MSIX package format got released two years ago. Now Win32 and UWP are just two complementary sandboxed execution models, more so when Windows 10X gets released.

jchw 7y ago

Huh? I know for a fact Qt 5 itself supports fractional scaling because it works on Linux and especially KDE. I don’t get why things wouldn’t work? https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/highdpi.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/highdpi.html

justinclift 7y ago

Yeah.. Also, Dark Mode support on windows (and others) still doesn't work properly, though there are workarounds. For Windows at least, the Dark Mode support in Qt seems to have someone now assigned to the task (last few days). So it might be better with the next major release.

dagmx 7y ago

The DPI Scaling may be down to using earlier versions of Qt or being misconfigured. https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/highdpi.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/highdpi.html I've used Qt successfully here with different DPI, and it works well once configured for the most part. It's still not perfect on Windows, but it's a lot better than it used to be when set up properly.

FraKtus 7y ago

VLC does not look like using Qt, at least on macOS.