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NeoOffice :: View topic - Blurry text in Retina display
Blurry text in Retina display
 
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macdrack
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Joined: Jun 25, 2012
Posts: 20

PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 4:33 pm    Post subject:

test-2 gives this.

Cheers.
Gav.
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 4:46 pm    Post subject:

Excellent. This is exactly what I need. It appears that the second line uses the most reliable approach. That approach is to draw to a CGLayer object that is the window's width and height times the scaling factor that was printed to the Terminal by the first "test" executable.

I will then need to draw text with a font size set to font size in NeoOffice times the same scaling factor, line width set to the same scaling factor, etc. And then I draw to window with 1 divided the scaling factor.

A bit tangled, but this should be feasible to implement. I will be working solely on Retina display support until this is done. Of course, if a crashing bug is reported I will switch to fixing that as crashing bugs can cause data loss, but other than that, Retina Display is my top priority.

Patrick
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macdrack
Sentinel


Joined: Jun 25, 2012
Posts: 20

PostPosted: Sat Jun 30, 2012 4:54 pm    Post subject:

Glad to help.

And I have to say that I'm seriously impressed with the attention especially given that retina displays could very well turn out to be a very small percentage of your Users.

Thanks again.
Gav.
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pluby
The Architect
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Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Tue Jul 03, 2012 7:40 am    Post subject:

macdrack wrote:
And I have to say that I'm seriously impressed with the attention especially given that retina displays could very well turn out to be a very small percentage of your Users.


This is probably a good time to make everyone aware of some of the limitations that NeoOffice will have with Retina displays.

I am confident that in the coming weeks I can fix the text blurriness issue by using "2x scaling" like was used to draw line 2 in the last "test" executable that I posted.

However, the following things will continue to remain blurry for the foreseeable future:

1. Toolbar icons - All of our icons are 32 x 32 pixels and when using a Retina display, Mac OS X will upscale the images to 64 x 64 pixels resulting in a jagged rendering of the icon. Creating 64 x 64 pixel versions of all of the toolbar icons is a massive effort by the volunteers who created the icons so we are not likely to see 64 x 64 pixels anytime soon.

2. Native buttons, scrollbars, etc. - I have found that using the 2x scaling approach does not work when drawing most native controls to a CGLayer object. The native controls appear to be drawn at low resolution and then upscaled like our toolbar icons.

I may be wrong about limitation #2 above so if you can run the attached "test" executable and post the screen snapshot, I can verify if #2 is true or not.

Patrick
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macdrack
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Joined: Jun 25, 2012
Posts: 20

PostPosted: Tue Jul 03, 2012 1:19 pm    Post subject:

Here you go.

And wrt to your comments. Looking at most of the other Apps, the single biggest issue is when the primary focus (in this case the main text area) is scaled badly.
I personally would consider it a massive step forward for the main text area to be rectified. The Icons and associated fluff for me is a nice to have only.

Ta
Gav.
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OPENSTEP
The One
The One


Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA

PostPosted: Tue Jul 03, 2012 9:42 pm    Post subject:

Yeah even with this info, please be aware that there's a highly insignificant amount of re-engineering needed to get even just the text to work. If we do ever manage to get anything in for retina displays it would be in many incremental stages, and we certainly do not have resources to redo artwork in hidpi. With all of the brouhaha surrounding the display it is really sad Apple didn't think all this garbage through first and actually make sure developers have the infrastructure they need instead of trying to auto-adjust all of this stuff with pixel doubling and such in the background. At least with the Intel transition they did have the rental Xeon developer machine program, but I guess now they expect that everyone has not only the $$ for a machine but also time to find workarounds for their undocumented behaviours which, of course, are subject to change at any time... Rolling Eyes

ed
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macdrack
Sentinel


Joined: Jun 25, 2012
Posts: 20

PostPosted: Wed Jul 04, 2012 11:40 am    Post subject:

I understand your position and as I mentioned early, I really appreciate your attitude and time you invest in NeoOffice.

Thanks.
Gav.
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 12:04 pm    Post subject:

Can you run the attached "test" executable and post a screen snapshot? This executable tries another approach to improving the text drawing resolution.

The approach I have been working on is not working well at all and has some very bad side effects on line and shape drawing so I am hopeful that I can use the approach in the attached executable to isolate all Retina display code changes to only text drawing.

Patrick
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macdrack
Sentinel


Joined: Jun 25, 2012
Posts: 20

PostPosted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 1:00 pm    Post subject:

Hope this helps.

Ta
Gav.
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 4:42 pm    Post subject:

Thank you for the screen snapshot. Unfortunately, it tells me that my "fallback" approach won't work so I will have to go back and retry my original approach that I have been working on bit by bit over the last couple of weeks.

Unfortunately, my original approach resulted in many line and shape drawing errors so this effort is going significantly slower so I won't likely have a stable solution implemented until after Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is released by Apple later this month.

Although I doubt it will happen, my hope is that Apple might improve the underlying functionality of CGLayer objects in Mac OS X 10.8 so once it is released by Apple and you have upgraded, can you rerun the last "test" executable that I posted?

Patrick
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macdrack
Sentinel


Joined: Jun 25, 2012
Posts: 20

PostPosted: Fri Jul 13, 2012 5:44 am    Post subject:

pluby wrote:
Thank you for the screen snapshot. Unfortunately, it tells me that my "fallback" approach won't work so I will have to go back and retry my original approach that I have been working on bit by bit over the last couple of weeks.

Shame.

pluby wrote:
Unfortunately, my original approach resulted in many line and shape drawing errors so this effort is going significantly slower so I won't likely have a stable solution implemented until after Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is released by Apple later this month.

Although I doubt it will happen, my hope is that Apple might improve the underlying functionality of CGLayer objects in Mac OS X 10.8 so once it is released by Apple and you have upgraded, can you rerun the last "test" executable that I posted?

Patrick


Fingers crossed.
I'll let you know ASAP later this month.
Ta
Gav.
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Fri Jul 13, 2012 11:07 am    Post subject:

I realized that my last "test" executable did not do the scrollbar I had in previous executables. Can you run the attached executable and post a screen snapshot of the text and scrollbar that appears?

Then, after you upgrade to Mac OS X 10.8, please rerun so that I can see if there are any changes in Mac OS X 10.8 that we can leverage.

Patrick
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macdrack
Sentinel


Joined: Jun 25, 2012
Posts: 20

PostPosted: Sat Jul 14, 2012 1:09 pm    Post subject:

Here you go.

Ta
Gav.
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Sat Jul 14, 2012 3:01 pm    Post subject:

Aha! Your last screen snapshot shows that I have stumbled onto something. Unlike the previous "test" executables, the last one draws both lines 1 and 2 as well as the scrollbar with the full Retina display resolution.

I would like to explore this new possibility and see if I can narrow down exactly what the key change is that makes the last executable work properly with Retina displays so can you run the attached executable and post another screen snapshot? Hopefully, the results will be identical as your last snapshot.

Patrick
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Sun Jul 15, 2012 9:47 am    Post subject:

Since the last "test" executable that you ran produced text and scrollbars at Retina display resolution, I have refactored the NeoOffice code to use the same offscreen image drawing approach that was in that last executable.

You might not see any change, but can you install the test patch and tell us if text is any less blurry? Also, can you take a screen snapshot that includes some text and one of the comboboxes (such as the font list) in the NeoOffice toolbar so that I can analyze what, if anything, has changed?:

Intel:
http://sally.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-3.3_Beta-Patch-1-Test-1-Intel.dmg

Patrick
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