[hpsdr] powerSDR and High resolution

[John Marvin]

This is a "bug" in PowerSDR, but it's root cause is due to the Windows 
design for dpi scaling (in particular, font scaling) being so bad. 
People writing software for Mac's don't even have to think much about 
this because MacOS got this right (and please don't accuse me of being a 
Mac fan, I'm just a developer who ran into this issue on Windows and 
found that I didn't have to do anything for the Mac port of the 
application).

Evidence for the bad Windows design is indicated by how many times 
Windows has made changes in this area over the years. I haven't looked 
closely at the Windows 10 fixes, so I can't say whether they may have 
finally got it right.

Anyway, for those who have 4K displays and don't see a problem you need 
to understand that 4K resolution doesn't necessarily mean "High DPI".  
The scaling problem is when you have a High DPI display. If you have a 
4K display, but your monitor size is > 30" then you really don't have a 
very high DPI display, although it is probably higher DPI than many non 
4K displays. The problem is not high resolution, the problem is with 
high DPI.

To make an application work correctly for High DPI displays on Windows 
you need to modify the application to make it "DPI Aware". Google for 
"WIndows DPI Aware" for details. To see some of the issues, Google for 
"Windows High DPI scaling".

If you want to see the issues with PowerSDR for yourself, try changing 
your font scaling to 200-250%. For some versions of windows you may need 
to click on "Set custom text size" or something similar if you don't get 
the option to scale above 150% (and a lot of applications have problems 
even at 150%). Even then the dialog may only let you go to 200% with the 
drop down box, but if it has a ruler, try dragging on the ruler (in 
Windows 7 you can get to 500% that way).  I use this method periodically 
to make sure I haven't broken support for High DPI displays, even though 
I don't own a High DPI display.

Higher and higher DPI displays are coming, although the really high dpi 
displays tend to be smaller displays. It's rumored that the Samsung 
Galaxy Note 8 will have a 4K display. If the screen size isn't much 
above 6" that is going to be a > 600 dpi display!

73,

John
AC0ZG

On 6/27/2017 5:14 PM, Brian D. Comer wrote:
***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****

George

My display is only 3200 X 1800. When I set the DPI to 1 as per the windows
10 note it locked out the scaling under settings. If I Turn off custom
scaling and sign out, when it comes back powerSDR is messed  up. If "Change
the size of text, and other apps" is set to 250% as recommended, 
powerSDR is
totally messed up, if set to 100 or 125 the vertical is correct but the
horizontal takes the full width. The GTX 970 M driver recommended by Razer
or something does not seem to handle this well. Only setting DPI to 1 with
regedit seems to get a good result. It is interesting to note that, a 
second
monitor I have connected with only 1920 by 1080 follows the built in 
monitor
on the lap top ever if it set as the primary monitor.

I'm also using Windows 10 Creator's Edition.

I understand this is a windows setting and the program is working as it was
designed. However now with small hi resolution screens this makes the text
very small. The GUI window comes up 5 by 2.8 inches. I can go to full 
screen
buy that only results in the same size text sparsely spread over the 
screen.


Brian KF6C