5 ms·

> That's still mostly the case in what's shipping right now I believe All major compositors support fractional scaling extension these days which allows pixel

by zokier 1y ago

> That's still mostly the case in what's shipping right now I believe All major compositors support fractional scaling extension these days which allows pixel perfect rendering afaik, and I believe Qt6 and GTK4 also support it. https://wayland.app/protocols/fractional-scale-v1#compositor-support https://wayland.app/protocols/fractional-scale-v1#compositor...

pedrocr 1y ago
Seems like the support is getting there. I just checked Firefox and it has landed the code but still has it disabled by default. Most users that set 1.5x on their session are probably still getting needless scaling but hopefully that won't last too long.
- chrismorgan 1y ago
  It landed four years ago, but had debilitating problems. Maybe a year ago when I last tried it, it was just as bad—no movement at all. But now, it seems largely fixed, hooray! Just toggled widget.wayland.fractional-scale.enabled and restarted, and although there are issues with windows not synchronising their scale (my screen is 1.5×; at startup, one of two windows stayed 2×; on new window, windows are briefly 2×; on factor change, sometimes chrome gets stuck at the next integer, probably the same issue), it’s all workaroundable and I can live with it. Ahhhhhhhh… so nice.
cycomanic 1y ago
That's great, however why do we use a "scale factor" in the first place? We had a perfectly fitting metric in DPI, why can't I set the desired DPI for every monitor, but instead need to calculate some arbitrary scale factor? I'm generally a strong wayland proponent and believe it's a big step forward over X in many ways, but some decisions just make me scratch my head.
- sho_hn 1y ago
  The end-user UIs don't ask you to calculate anything. Typically they have a slider from 100% to, say, 400% and let you set this to something like 145%. This may take some getting used to if you're familiar with DPI and already know the value you like, but for non-technical users it's more approachable. Not everyone knows DPI or how many dots they want to their inches. That the 145% is 1.45 under the hood is really an implementation detail.
  - atq2119 1y ago
    Not to mention that only a small fraction of the world uses inches...
    - account42 1y ago
      For display (diagonal) sizes inches have become the default unit everywhere I've been to.
    - lproven 1y ago
      This is true, but there are a few things which just happen to be measured in this obsolete and arbitrary unit around most of the world, and pizzas and computer screens are two of the ones that can be mentioned in polite society. :-) I speak very bad Norwegian. I use metric for everything. But once I ordered a pizza late at night in Bergen after a few beers, and they asked me how big I wanted in centimetres and it broke my decision-making process badly. I can handle Norwegian numbers and I can handle cm but not pizzas in cm. I ended up with a vast pizza that was a ridiculous size for one, but what the hell, I was very hungry. I just left the crusts.
  - cycomanic 1y ago
    I don't care about what we call the metric, I argue that a relative metric, where the reference point is device dependent is simply bad design. I challenge you, tell a non-technical user to set two monitors (e.g. laptop and external) to display text/windows at the same size. I will guarantee you that it will take them significant amount of time moving those relative sliders around. If we had an absolute metric it would be trivial. Similarly, for people who regularly plug into different monitors, they would simply set a desired DPI and everywhere they plug into things would look the same instead of having to open the scale menu every time.
- zokier 1y ago
  DPI (or PPI) is an absolute measurement. Scale factor is intentionally relative. Different circumstances will want to have different scale factor : dpi ratios; most software do not care if certain UI element is exactly x mm in size, but instead just care that their UI element scale matches the rest of the system. Basically scale factor neatly encapsulates things like viewing distance, user eyesight, dexterity, and preference, different input device accuracy, and many others. It is easier to have human say how big/small they want things to be than have gazillion flags for individual attributes and then some complicated heuristics to deduce the scale.
  - cycomanic 1y ago
    I disagree, I don't want a relative metric. You're saying scale factor neatly encapsulates viewing distance, eyesight, preference, but compared to what? Scale is meaningless if I don't have a reference point. If I have two different size monitors you have now created a metric where a scale of 2x means something completely different. So to get things look the same I either have to manually calculate DPI or I have to manually try and error until it looks right. Same thing if I change monitors, I now have to try until I get the desired scale, while if I had DPI I would not have to change a thing. > It is easier to have human say how big/small they want things to be than have gazillion flags for individual attributes and then some complicated heuristics to deduce the scale. I don't understand why I need gazillion flags, I just set desired DPI (instead of scale). But an absolute metric is almost always better than a relative metric, especially if the relative point is device dependent.
    - meindnoch 1y ago
      What you actually want is not DPI (or PPI, pixels per inch) but PPD (pixels per degree). But that depends on the viewing distance.
      - account42 1y ago
        Not even that - my mom and I might sit the same distance from screens of the same size but she will want everything to be scaled larger than I do. Ultimately, it's a preference and not something that should strictly match some objective measurement.
- MadnessASAP 1y ago
  I'm not privy to what discussions happened during the protocol development. However using scale within the protocol seems more practical to me. Not all displays accurately report their DPI (or can, such as projectors). Not all users, such as myself, know their monitors DPI. Finally the scaling algorithm will ultimately use a scale factor, so at a protocol level that might as well be what is passed. There is of course nothing stopping a display management widget/settings page/application from asking for DPI and then converting it to a scale factor, I just don't known of any that exist.
  - cycomanic 1y ago
    As I replied to the other poster. I don't think DPI should necessarily be the exposed metric, but I do think that we should use something non device-dependent as our reference point, e.g. make 100% = 96 dpi. I can guarantee that it is surprising to non-technical users (and a source of frustration for technical users) that the scale factor and UI element size can be completely different on two of the same laptops (just a different display resolution which is quite common). And it's also unpredictable which one will have the larger UI elements. Generally I believe UI should have behave as predictably as possible.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  > We had a perfectly fitting metric in DPI, why can't I set the desired DPI for every monitor, but instead need to calculate some arbitrary scale factor? Because certain ratios work a lot better than others, and calculating the exact DPI to get those benefits is a lot harder than estimating the scaling factor you want. Also the scaling factor calculation is more reliable.
Sophira 1y ago
I don't run a compositor, and with Qt6, Some programs like VirtualBox just don't respect Qt's scaling factor setting. Setting the font DPI instead results in weird bugs, like the display window getting smaller and smaller. As it happens, VirtualBox does have its own scaling setting, but it's pretty bad, in my opinion. But I'm kind of forced to use it because Qt's own scaling just doesn't work in this case.

by zokier 1y ago

pedrocr 1y ago

Seems like the support is getting there. I just checked Firefox and it has landed the code but still has it disabled by default. Most users that set 1.5x on their session are probably still getting needless scaling but hopefully that won't last too long.

chrismorgan 1y ago
It landed four years ago, but had debilitating problems. Maybe a year ago when I last tried it, it was just as bad—no movement at all. But now, it seems largely fixed, hooray! Just toggled widget.wayland.fractional-scale.enabled and restarted, and although there are issues with windows not synchronising their scale (my screen is 1.5×; at startup, one of two windows stayed 2×; on new window, windows are briefly 2×; on factor change, sometimes chrome gets stuck at the next integer, probably the same issue), it’s all workaroundable and I can live with it. Ahhhhhhhh… so nice.

cycomanic 1y ago

That's great, however why do we use a "scale factor" in the first place? We had a perfectly fitting metric in DPI, why can't I set the desired DPI for every monitor, but instead need to calculate some arbitrary scale factor? I'm generally a strong wayland proponent and believe it's a big step forward over X in many ways, but some decisions just make me scratch my head.

sho_hn 1y ago
The end-user UIs don't ask you to calculate anything. Typically they have a slider from 100% to, say, 400% and let you set this to something like 145%. This may take some getting used to if you're familiar with DPI and already know the value you like, but for non-technical users it's more approachable. Not everyone knows DPI or how many dots they want to their inches. That the 145% is 1.45 under the hood is really an implementation detail.
- atq2119 1y ago
  Not to mention that only a small fraction of the world uses inches...
  - account42 1y ago
    For display (diagonal) sizes inches have become the default unit everywhere I've been to.
  - lproven 1y ago
    This is true, but there are a few things which just happen to be measured in this obsolete and arbitrary unit around most of the world, and pizzas and computer screens are two of the ones that can be mentioned in polite society. :-) I speak very bad Norwegian. I use metric for everything. But once I ordered a pizza late at night in Bergen after a few beers, and they asked me how big I wanted in centimetres and it broke my decision-making process badly. I can handle Norwegian numbers and I can handle cm but not pizzas in cm. I ended up with a vast pizza that was a ridiculous size for one, but what the hell, I was very hungry. I just left the crusts.
- cycomanic 1y ago
  I don't care about what we call the metric, I argue that a relative metric, where the reference point is device dependent is simply bad design. I challenge you, tell a non-technical user to set two monitors (e.g. laptop and external) to display text/windows at the same size. I will guarantee you that it will take them significant amount of time moving those relative sliders around. If we had an absolute metric it would be trivial. Similarly, for people who regularly plug into different monitors, they would simply set a desired DPI and everywhere they plug into things would look the same instead of having to open the scale menu every time.
zokier 1y ago
DPI (or PPI) is an absolute measurement. Scale factor is intentionally relative. Different circumstances will want to have different scale factor : dpi ratios; most software do not care if certain UI element is exactly x mm in size, but instead just care that their UI element scale matches the rest of the system. Basically scale factor neatly encapsulates things like viewing distance, user eyesight, dexterity, and preference, different input device accuracy, and many others. It is easier to have human say how big/small they want things to be than have gazillion flags for individual attributes and then some complicated heuristics to deduce the scale.
- cycomanic 1y ago
  I disagree, I don't want a relative metric. You're saying scale factor neatly encapsulates viewing distance, eyesight, preference, but compared to what? Scale is meaningless if I don't have a reference point. If I have two different size monitors you have now created a metric where a scale of 2x means something completely different. So to get things look the same I either have to manually calculate DPI or I have to manually try and error until it looks right. Same thing if I change monitors, I now have to try until I get the desired scale, while if I had DPI I would not have to change a thing. > It is easier to have human say how big/small they want things to be than have gazillion flags for individual attributes and then some complicated heuristics to deduce the scale. I don't understand why I need gazillion flags, I just set desired DPI (instead of scale). But an absolute metric is almost always better than a relative metric, especially if the relative point is device dependent.
  - meindnoch 1y ago
    What you actually want is not DPI (or PPI, pixels per inch) but PPD (pixels per degree). But that depends on the viewing distance.
    - account42 1y ago
      Not even that - my mom and I might sit the same distance from screens of the same size but she will want everything to be scaled larger than I do. Ultimately, it's a preference and not something that should strictly match some objective measurement.
MadnessASAP 1y ago
I'm not privy to what discussions happened during the protocol development. However using scale within the protocol seems more practical to me. Not all displays accurately report their DPI (or can, such as projectors). Not all users, such as myself, know their monitors DPI. Finally the scaling algorithm will ultimately use a scale factor, so at a protocol level that might as well be what is passed. There is of course nothing stopping a display management widget/settings page/application from asking for DPI and then converting it to a scale factor, I just don't known of any that exist.
- cycomanic 1y ago
  As I replied to the other poster. I don't think DPI should necessarily be the exposed metric, but I do think that we should use something non device-dependent as our reference point, e.g. make 100% = 96 dpi. I can guarantee that it is surprising to non-technical users (and a source of frustration for technical users) that the scale factor and UI element size can be completely different on two of the same laptops (just a different display resolution which is quite common). And it's also unpredictable which one will have the larger UI elements. Generally I believe UI should have behave as predictably as possible.
Dylan16807 1y ago
> We had a perfectly fitting metric in DPI, why can't I set the desired DPI for every monitor, but instead need to calculate some arbitrary scale factor? Because certain ratios work a lot better than others, and calculating the exact DPI to get those benefits is a lot harder than estimating the scaling factor you want. Also the scaling factor calculation is more reliable.

Sophira 1y ago

I don't run a compositor, and with Qt6, Some programs like VirtualBox just don't respect Qt's scaling factor setting. Setting the font DPI instead results in weird bugs, like the display window getting smaller and smaller. As it happens, VirtualBox does have its own scaling setting, but it's pretty bad, in my opinion. But I'm kind of forced to use it because Qt's own scaling just doesn't work in this case.