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macdrack Sentinel
Joined: Jun 25, 2012 Posts: 20
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Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 3:02 pm Post subject: |
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Sadly, my testing with NeoOffice 3.3 beta on a Mac Pro Retina is not great.
The Icons are blurry as expected, but that really is a minor issue.
The text however, is also blurry/grainy and rather distracting.
Is there anything anyone would like me to check in particular?
Has to be sad the whole Retina adventure has been bitter-sweet to date...
Cheers.
Gav. |
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pluby The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949
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Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 3:12 pm Post subject: |
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FYI. I split your post into its own topic so that it is easier to find by other users.
Can you launch the System Preferences application, click on the Displays icon, select the Display tab, and take a screen snapshot of the "Resolutions" list? Be sure to scroll down so that the selected resolution is shown in your screen snapshot.
To take a screen snapshot, select the Command-Shift-4 keys on your Mac and drag your mouse to highlight the area on the screen where the error is displayed. After you highlight an area and release your mouse, a new image file will appear on your machine's desktop. Attach that new image file to your post.
Instructions for attaching the image to your post are in this post.
Patrick |
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macdrack Sentinel
Joined: Jun 25, 2012 Posts: 20
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Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 3:18 pm Post subject: |
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Hi Patrick,
Sadly the Retinas' are locked down in that respect. This is what we have now (see attached)
The middle option is the default, the 4th is labelled 'Looks like 1680x1050', the 5th is labelled 'Looks like 1920x1080'.
Ta Gav. |
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pluby The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949
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Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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macdrack wrote: | Sadly the Retinas' are locked down in that respect. This is what we have now (see attached)
The middle option is the default, the 4th is labelled 'Looks like 1680x1050', the 5th is labelled 'Looks like 1920x1080'. |
Thank you for the screen snapshot. I was worried that you were using a super high resolution that Apple does not yet support but since you are using one of the supported resolutions, can you take a screen snapshot of the area of a NeoOffice document where this blurriness is most obvious? I can then view the individual pixels to see if there is some pattern to the blurriness.
Patrick |
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macdrack Sentinel
Joined: Jun 25, 2012 Posts: 20
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Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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OK. 2 shots one of text. One of the toolbar, just for reference.
Cheers.
Gav. |
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pluby The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949
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Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 5:32 pm Post subject: |
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Thank you for the screen snapshots. I have 2 questions for you:
1. Are you using Mac OS X 10.7.4 or a 10.8 developer preview?
2. If you change the font to Times New Roman, do you see the same level of blurriness?
My initial guess is that while our code draws text to a resolution independent "CGLayer" object. At some point our code is converting that CGLayer object to a 96 DPI bitmap and the bitmap is being drawn to the screen.
I have some idea where that might be occurring and I had already started working on removing the code that I know is likely to cause such conversions to bitmaps.
I expect that I will be able to post a test patch that fixes the known issue in the next 48 hours. I will post when I have the test patch for you to try. Hopefully the test patch will also fix your issue. If not, we will investigate further.
Patrick |
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macdrack Sentinel
Joined: Jun 25, 2012 Posts: 20
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Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 5:53 pm Post subject: |
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No Problem.
1. 10.7.4
2. I tried a few fonts including Times New Roman with similar results.
I'll keep a look out for a patch.
Many Thanks.
Gavin |
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pluby The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949
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Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 5:05 pm Post subject: |
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I have made some changes to the NeoOffice code to prevent unnecessary conversion of drawing output to 96 DPI bitmaps. This is only the first part of my planned changes for fixing the text blurriness problem that you see. Before I can start on the next set of code changes, can you install the following test patch and tell us if you see any change in the amount of text blurriness on your Retina display? Or is the blurriness unchanged?:
Intel:
http://sally.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-3.3_Beta-Patch-0-Test-1-Intel.dmg
Patrick |
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macdrack Sentinel
Joined: Jun 25, 2012 Posts: 20
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Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 8:00 pm Post subject: |
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Hi Patrick.
I would say no difference personally.
Here's another screen shot.
Ta.
Gav. |
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pluby The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949
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Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2012 8:09 pm Post subject: |
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macdrack wrote: | I would say no difference personally. |
I suspected that would be the case. From what you see, it appears that Mac OS X converts all drawing we do to a CGLayer object to 96 DPI bitmaps behind the scenes. So, I will need to use CGLayer objects that have widths and heights that are "actual screen resolution / 96 DPI" larger than I do know.
I will start reworking the code and I will post a test patch that uses the above approach in the next day or two.
In the meantime, I would recommend that you install the following test patch as it removes code that your test found to be useless:
Intel:
http://sally.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-3.3_Beta-Patch-0-Test-2-Intel.dmg
Patrick |
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pluby The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949
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Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 1:28 pm Post subject: |
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I have been working on the Retina display text drawing issues that you reported. However, I need to get some more data from you before I can proceed further.
Can you download the attached "test" executable. Do not try to open it is it is not a document. Instead, move the downloaded "test" executable to your Desktop, and then launch the Terminal application. Paste the following commands into the Terminal window and press the Return key:
Code: | chmod 755 ~/Desktop/test
~/Desktop/test |
If the executable launches properly, a small window should appear with the word "Alignment" drawn 3 times in the window. Take a screen snapshot of that window and attach the screen snapshot in your post. The screen snapshot will tell me which of the 3 text possible drawing approaches that I am looking at work and which do not work with Retina displays.
After taking the screen snapshot, go back to the Terminal window, press the Control-C keys to force the executable to quit and then copy any output in the Terminal into your post. The Terminal output will give me some data on the screen scaling factors that the Retina display is using.
Patrick |
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macdrack Sentinel
Joined: Jun 25, 2012 Posts: 20
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Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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Window scale factor: 2.000000
Main screen scale factor: 2.000000
If it's not clear from the attachment, the last line appears to be rendered perfectly and works across all the retina scaled resolutions as well.
Hope it helps.
Chers.
Gav. |
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pluby The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949
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Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 3:33 pm Post subject: |
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Thank you for the screen snapshot. When I zoom in, I can definitely see that the top 2 lines are drawing in 4 pixel square chunks like NeoOffice does. So, I have attached a new "test" executable that uses a different approach to try and get the text drawing in the first 2 lines to resolve down to a single pixel like the third line.
Can you run the attached new "test" executable and post another screen snapshot? I don't need the Terminal output this time.
Patrick |
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macdrack Sentinel
Joined: Jun 25, 2012 Posts: 20
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Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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Hi There,
here you go
Cheers.
Gav. |
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pluby The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949
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Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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Thank you for the screen snapshot. The good news is that the bottom 2 lines are exactly the same (that is good news) but the first line is missing the red and blue transparent pixels that Mac OS X 's font smoothing for LCD screens normally draws.
So, here is one more new "test" executable to try. If the screen snapshot from this one has identical pixels in all 3 lines, then I know exactly what I need to implement in the NeoOffice code to support Retina displays.
Patrick |
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