[Bf-committers] Automatic DPI detection issues

Thu Jul 13 16:45:32 CEST 2017

Hi,

Any feature that attempts to automatically guess user needs is due to failure.
The only automatic DPI setting I would accept is to detect High DPI screens (4k or more).

-Ton-

--------------------------------------------------------
Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
Chairman Blender Foundation, Director Blender Institute
Entrepotdok 57A, 1018 AD, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

> On 13 Jul 2017, at 16:25, Brecht Van Lommel <brechtvanlommel at pandora.be> wrote:
> 
> Then I think the real issue is that Blender fonts draw blurry below a
> certain size. It seems to happen when changing the DPI, but also when
> changing the font size or zooming.
> 
> So I think the solution is to either solve that problem (not sure if it's
> something that can be tweaked in font drawing or would need a different
> font), or work around it by biasing the auto DPI a bit towards 92.
> 
> On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 2:37 PM, Sergey Sharybin <sergey.vfx at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Answers are inlined.
>> 
>> It the UI is too small you scale it up, if it's too big you scale it down?
>>> 
>> 
>> Is this interface too small or too big:
>> http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=117179
>> 
>> What should i put to a Scale factor to make it proper "kerning" ?
>> 
>> It's not clear to me what you mean by improperly displayed fonts here, I
>>> tried various DPI values in 2.78 and various UI scale values in master
>> and
>>> the fonts always look ok to me.
>>> 
>> 
>> Just force getDPIHint() to return 88 and see font artifacts, similar to the
>> screenshot above.
>> 
>> 
>>>> - Not reporting detected DPI is also wrong.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> I don't know of any other application reporting this in the UI, why does
>>> the absolute value matter to the user?
>>> 
>> 
>> Maybe because other applications are not failing that badly on displaying
>> good fonts by default?
>> 
>> 
>>>> - Not being able to correct auto-detected DPI also sounds wrong. All
>> the
>>> DE
>>>> will have option to override X11 DPI specifically for the case when X11
>>>> reports wrong DPI.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Again, it can be corrected by changing the UI scale. This is fully
>>> equivalent to adjusting the DPI value.
>>> 
>> 
>> With the difference that i do have a remote idea what my DPI should be, but
>> i've got no idea what should be the scaling factor to compensate badly
>> working fonts in Blender.
>> 
>> 
>>>> 
>>>> P.S. I wouldn't know if other applications are detecting DPI correctly
>>> (as
>>>> in, not sure they are using crappy DPI of 88x89 or are rounding it to
>>> some
>>>> more commonly used DPI), but it's only Blender which has badly rendered
>>>> fonts on my system.
>>>> P.P.S. Surely i can force/correct X11/DE's DPI, but then i don't see
>> any
>>>> benefit on the auto-detection of DPI. It only causes issues rather than
>>>> solving anything.
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 1:15 PM, Brecht Van Lommel <
>>>> brechtvanlommel at pandora.be> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> As mentioned in the commit log, the UI Scale setting in the Interface
>>> tab
>>>>> can be used, doesn't that work?
>>>>> 
>>>>> If you look at the equivalent settings for
>> Windows/macOS/Gnome/Unity/..
>>>>> they also offer a scale or percentage. I see no reason to show the
>>>> absolute
>>>>> DPI.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Linux doesn't have a single window manager standard for specifying
>> DPI,
>>>> but
>>>>> we use the same convention as Chrome or Firefox which works in many
>>>> window
>>>>> managers, it certainly isn't random. Are you saying the DPI is not
>>> being
>>>>> detect correctly on your system, while it works in other
>> applications?
>>>>> Perhaps we can fix that?
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 12:32 PM, Sergey Sharybin <
>>> sergey.vfx at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hi everyone,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Today i've run into annoying/hard to predict situation: running my
>>>>> regular
>>>>>> blender was working fine, but doing --factory-startup was messing
>> up
>>>>> fonts
>>>>>> in Blender's interface.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> it turns out, this commit is responsible for such behavior [1].
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> What happens is, when there is existing user-preferences.blend,
>>> Blender
>>>>>> will use DPI stored in there. Otherwise, Blender will use
>>> auto-detected
>>>>>> DPI. This has following issues:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> - This is totally unpredictable, changes Blender interface based on
>>>> some
>>>>>> rather random factors.
>>>>>> - Blender does not tell user what DPI it detected (yes, the commit
>>>>> removed
>>>>>> setting from User Preferences)
>>>>>> - If system reports buggy DPI, there is no easy way to know what's
>>>>> causing
>>>>>> it and how to correct.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> So i think we should bring DPI setting back to user preferences. It
>>> is
>>>>>> really bad practice to secretly use setting, without even telling
>>> what
>>>>> the
>>>>>> value of the setting is. It is also bad practice to auto-detect
>>>> something
>>>>>> and not give any clues to user what the detected value is. And
>>> finally,
>>>>>> there should be a way to override auto-detected DPI, for the exact
>>> case
>>>>>> when the reported one is bad.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> [1] https://developer.blender.org/rBfe3fb23
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> With best regards, Sergey Sharybin
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Bf-committers mailing list
>>>>>> Bf-committers at blender.org
>>>>>> https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
>>>>>> 
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> With best regards, Sergey Sharybin
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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> With best regards, Sergey Sharybin
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