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frdmfghtr · Apr 23, 2006, 12:31 PM

Maybe this is a "apps"-appropriate post, but I would think it is a OS X setting somewhere...

When I use MS Word, zooming to 100% shows that an inch of "paper" is quite a bit less than an inch of screen distance. In other words, it appears that apps are assuming about 72 dpi resolution, where the 12" iBook has a pixel density of 106 dpi.

Is there a setting somewhere in OS X to set the monitor DPI value?

Horsepoo!!! · Apr 23, 2006, 12:45 PM

Not yet...the next version of OS X aka Leopard is rumored to have such a feature though.

But it's still at least 7-8 months away.

aristotles · Apr 23, 2006, 12:46 PM

No. All displays for the mac used to be 72DPI in the past.

slugslugslug · Apr 23, 2006, 01:15 PM

If you have the Developer Tools installed, you can change the UI resolution with Quartz Debug. But it will suck. I just tried it in Word, and it sucks a lot there. I believe that for some apps, scaling the UI means that the OS will re-render all the text from scratch using the vector info in the fonts, but in Word, the OS scales up the bitmap provided by the app, so it looks blurry. Also, your menus will have to be annoyingly large, and for some reason Word's toolbars disappeared on me when I tried it. So, yeah, it's not useable yet and probably won't be until at least Leopard and the next version of Office.

driven · Apr 24, 2006, 07:42 AM

I think Microsoft is fighting this issue as well with Vista.

As display resolutions increase this is going to be much more significant. This is especially true with laptops.

P · Apr 24, 2006, 11:08 AM

But on Windows, the default resolution is 96 DPI, not 72 DPI, and you can raise it to 120 DPI as well. I agree that the OS will need to adapt to higher resolutions quite soon - there is a nice piece on it in the Fatbits blog on Ars right now - and I do think Leopard will do something like that.

driven · Apr 24, 2006, 11:21 AM

Unfortuantely when you do change the DPI in windows quite a few of the apps end up looking like ass. That's the part that has to change. Apps need to be able to respond to more than one DPI setting.

Cadaver · Apr 27, 2006, 11:01 PM

Originally Posted by driven

Unfortuantely when you do change the DPI in windows quite a few of the apps end up looking like ass. That's the part that has to change. Apps need to be able to respond to more than one DPI setting.

Yeah, and even Microsoft's own creations would have serious problems when set to 120DPI. In many of the Windows Installer EULA Ok/Decline dialog boxes, the actual Ok/Decline buttons would be hidden from view, with no way to click them. The fonts in the dialog box got bigger and would push the buttons down and to the right. The dialog box itself, however, was rendered as a fixed size, so the buttons would actually be rendered out of the window and thus invisible.

At work I used to have a Dell D800 with a 15.4" screen at 1920x1200. Text was far too tiny at 96DPI, but looked great at 120DPI. But, I would have to reduce the DPI back to 96 before installing anything or running Windows Update, or else I'd get stuck (as many didn't respond to the Enter key, alt-O, alt-K, Esc, etc....

This was back in the WinXP SP1 days, so I don't know if its been fixed or not yet, but very, very annoying.

Catfish_Man · Apr 27, 2006, 11:20 PM

For Cocoa and modern Carbon apps, resolution switching support will be automatic, although there's an API for getting the scale factor. Older apps will have to explicitly support it.

SIRSALE · 10:40 AM

Originally Posted by Cadaver

Yeah, and even Microsoft's own creations would have serious problems when set to 120DPI. In many of the Windows Installer EULA Ok/Decline dialog boxes, the actual Ok/Decline buttons would be hidden from view, with no way to click them. The fonts in the dialog box got bigger and would push the buttons down and to the right. The dialog box itself, however, was rendered as a fixed size, so the buttons would actually be rendered out of the window and thus invisible.

At work I used to have a Dell D800 with a 15.4" screen at 1920x1200. Text was far too tiny at 96DPI, but looked great at 120DPI. But, I would have to reduce the DPI back to 96 before installing anything or running Windows Update, or else I'd get stuck (as many didn't respond to the Enter key, alt-O, alt-K, Esc, etc....

This was back in the WinXP SP1 days, so I don't know if its been fixed or not yet, but very, very annoying.

I'm using Win XP SP2, and thought I should mention that 120 DPI works great on my 1400x1050 15" laptop display. I'm a bit nearsighted, so the default DPI makes menus and the like much too small for me. Actually, this is one of my main issues with OS X at the moment (I'm planning to buy a MacBook). Most applications can scale the "contents" (ie chat logs, web pages) but menus and forms remain small.

I was quite surprised to find that OS X lacks this feature when Windows does have it. I hope it is added in Leopard.

cheers,

Are

Catfish_Man · Jun 3, 2006, 12:08 PM

You might want to check out the Universal Access zoom settings in System Preferences.

SIRSALE · Jun 4, 2006, 09:44 AM

Yeah, I tried them, but like the equivalent in Win XP, they're not really something I find usable, too cumbersome. Thanks for the tip though!