Make stipple editor window and fonts scalable?

I'm fixing other peoples' lousy layer patterns and having a lot
of "oopses" in per-pixel editing of stipple patterns, on a 4K
screen. The Layer Toolbox window is also kind of small at
4K, and neither window seems to scale fonts by the
Setup>Display>General size selection. It would be nice to
have the utility window fonts follow the "Default" text sizing
and also scale the graphical features (like, the color palette
bars are a bit skinny in the vertical direction and the Layer
Toolbox window will drag-size horizontally but not vertically,
and dragging does not scale anything but the color bars
(i.e. not text, not itty bitty "sub-icons", etc.).

Also several fields display with their "option boxes" stepping
partially on each other - Animation and Visibility, for sure.

It would be great if the utility windows were more "tunable".

Comments

  • edited June 2021

    Hi Jim,

    there are supposed to be a lot of compatibility options on Windows. I don't own a 4K screen, but some high-res laptop screens. For those, the system can be switched to larger application fonts and KLayout will simply inherit them.

    In addition in the compatibility section of the application properties there are options to allow Windows to scale the graphics itself and adjust to high resolution. That looks somewhat ugly, but I see Windows system applications do the same.

    Everything can be made scaling, but that's a lot of work - the icons need to be translated to SVG, I need to go through all fonts and make them relative to application ones, I need to add code for changing the basic geometries, convert painting code to float coordinates where applicable and so on. And doing that without hardware for testing does not feel right.

    Matthias

  • edited June 2021

    Maybe there is a simple solution: Qt provides internal scaling.

    Could you try setting the "QT_SCALE_FACTOR" environment variable to "2"?
    Another option is to set "QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR" to "1" which will enable automatic scaling for high-DPI monitors.

    On my system this scales everything nicely, including the icons.

    Matthias

  • Would this be a .bashrc entry, or a klayoutrc entry?

  • Hi, Dick!

    This is .bashrc or terminal window (from where you launch KLayout) setting. Same is true for other environment variables.

  • @dick_freebird You're on Windows, right? So I'd set the environment variable in the control panel: System / Edit environment variables for your account:

    Matthias

  • Thanks, Matthias - that was going to be my next question.

    The QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1 seems to have
    worked nicely enough, the text is larger (enough) and the
    "dependent" texts underneath the layer toolbox headings
    no longer "get stepped on".

    I'd call this a solution.

  • Very good :)

    To be frank, I do not fully understand the explanation the Qt people give for the scaling behaviour and how to properly implement it. There will be a time when I'll catch up with monitor development and get a 4K monitor and get into the experimenting mood for solving that issue. Right now, my priorities are more on the functionality side.

    Best regards,

    Matthias

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