Support high-DPI monitors

Recent Windows versions have improved support for high resolution monitors with more than 96 dpi. Currently, the Xara products all look blurry on such monitors (including DPX9). There are some Windows API functions and messages (see SetProcessDPIAware/SetProcessDpiAwareness) that can be used to use all the available screen resolution.

Since more and more monitors today (especially laptop monitors) have very small pixel sizes, it is an important feature to support, especially for any kind of graphics software. Would be very nice to see that for DP10 (it's what currently keeps me from upgrading, because the experience is really quite bad).

You could the same request into Adobe forums as well and I hope you have. You probably know that you can change the res. of what you bring into Xara products as a bitmap by changing it under the File Menu.
File --- Page Options --- View --- Bitmaps ---- "choose what you want here".

I always use "Import at dpi specified by image file" but this sometimes leads to a very large artboard and low viewing zoom levels.

I read the OP as the clarify of the Xara products to be the applications' presentations themselves, not their outputs.

Acorn

That's me putting me foot in it again! What a silly man. Sorry I really misread that because when I change up to a better dpi monitor late last year I used the recommended res. for my screen and it made everything smaller not blurry. Did a reg hack and got P/Shop and Illy to display better but my Xara programmes are stored on a different computer so I don't know if this hack will work with Xara. http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/201...on-surface-pro

I got this hot fix/reg hack from the adobe Illustrator forum but now I can't find it so that's why it came from Surface Pro Artist. Now if you use this hack please don't blame me if it doesn't work all I can say it worked with Illy and PS on a Dell monitor. At the same time I was doing the search to improve the UI in the Adobe products I read an article which stated to always use the recommended res. of your screen at all times and never change it which made a farce of some online games that I used to play on that computer. Sorry again for the mis-information.

Sorry, but this hack is not applicable to Xara Designer products.

The Adobe products are marked as "dpi aware" by default and so they use the physical screen pixel size, which makes the entire UI very small when pixels are small on high-dpi devices. (I.e. the Adobe products are not currently properly dpi aware, even though they declare themselves to be so.) The hack makes Illustrator and Photoshop declares themselves as "not dpi aware" so that they use the virtual pixel size provided by Windows for back compatibility with normal res screens.

Currently, Xara Designer products declare themselves as "not dpi aware" by default and so have exactly the opposite problem to the Adobe products. They don't use high-res pixels when they are available.

The OP was asking for Xara Designer to be made dpi aware but it's not simple. Just changing the default setting is not good enough, as shown by the Adobe products, because the user interface then becomes tiny. What is needed is for the user interface to remain large enough to use (and touch screens usually need bigger UI than desktops, even) while the view onto the drawings is rendered at the best hardware resolution. Furthermore, built-in assumptions about screen resolution being 96dpi on Windows devices have to be changed to respond to the physical device resolution. This all requires significant programming effort.

Phil

Thanks, Phil.

BTW, there is a setting to forcefully disable the scaling on high-DPI monitors in the "Compatibility" pane of the Designer executable's properties, but then of course happens what Phil describes and the UI elements get smaller (and barely usable for scale factors of 150% or larger).

Same here. Moved to a 4K screen with Windows 10 with scaling at 200% (it is a 24" 4K monitor).

XPGD is UNUSABLE, see screenshot (scaled down 50% in order to somewhat fit in the forum). Everything, particularly toolbar buttons, is 1/4th the size it should be.

http://i.imgur.com/lAcZTOQ.png

Windows scaling is also of course no solution because this reduces the visible drawing quality to 1/4th of what the monitor can display.

Another (not) funny side effect is described over there.

Xara REALLY needs to act here.

Unfortunately, the toolbars of Xara's non-skinned GUI are even more broken (e.g. even tinier) than with the dark skin, on HiDPI screens, see below screenshots:

Skinned GUI:
http://i.imgur.com/UaQOtCC.png

Native GUI:
http://i.imgur.com/5bPj4v9.png

Note especially how the numbers in those microscopic input boxes are totally unreadable.

And this is what XPGD has started to look like recently, on a Windows 10 laptop with FullHD screen.

Attachment 113463
Attachment 113462

Note how most of the icons are missing, and/or garbled.

You guys really need to redo that Xara GUI thoroughly!

And no, I'm not prepared to use that ugly and presumptuous black GUI that you have been forcing on everyone.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PhilM

This all requires significant programming effort.

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I hated the black UI at first.. but I hate working with one hand tied behind my back even more....

Two years and FOUR program versions later (v.11 -> v.15), and still no HiDPI support, not even in Designer Pro X. Talk about a "professional" program :(

versions 13 and 14 do not exist - magix jumped directly from 12 to 15 - so that's actually two versions ;)

can't argue with the two years plus though ...

Again 1 year later, and still no HiDPI support.

How ridiculous, embarrassing and cringeworthy.

Meanwhile, and after all these years, we are at a point where Xara, as a supposedly professional graphics suite, can no longer be taken seriously.

It'll descend into an area of occasional use by kids, hobbyists and retirees this way.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PhilM

What is needed is for the user interface to remain large enough to use (and touch screens usually need bigger UI than desktops, even) while the view onto the drawings is rendered at the best hardware resolution. Furthermore, built-in assumptions about screen resolution being 96dpi on Windows devices have to be changed to respond to the physical device resolution. This all requires significant programming effort.

Phil

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5 years and 9 months ago....

the resources have not been there for this, that much is obvious, though it would be a nice surprise if it suddenly happened

there is a list as long as your arm of things xara can't do each of which might preclude 'pro' status depending on your point of view...

:(

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Originally Posted by handrawn

xara can't do each of which might preclude 'pro' status depending on your point of view...

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...procrastinating?

Acorn

This was first posted January 2014, almost 6 years ago. Sadly, I guess this answers the question.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

...procrastinating?

Acorn

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:D

you would preclude procrastinating ? :p ;))

but - about the time this thread started and, coincidently or not, a few months before the arrival of affinity designer [now 5 years old], someone from xara said on TG that there were not [and never had been] in the business of competing with adobe

they have changed direction/focus

looked for the reference I mentioned above but I can't find it

thing is, xara started out as an on-the-fly design tool, very fast and capable of some amazing results in the right hands...and it still is that, but that in itself was never enough to ensure solid commercial success - hence the tie-up with corel, and then magix

xara has reinvented itself as xara.gmbh, a venture capital company focused on cloud based services

resources for the desktop were, and remain, limited - and updates are likely to follow, in general terms, what is required to support said cloud services and remain that way for the forseeable future [cf: the 'squish issue'] - and there is only so much that can be done with a UI with it's roots in the last millennium, without a complete recode as was done by affinity.. which brings us back to what PhilM said in 2014; from xara's point of view that is not the focus at this point in time

that the way I see it, anyhow

I can't believe that it seems to be necessary to tutor the manufacturer on this on an internet forum, because they obviously don't know how to fix this -- meanwhile ridiculous -- issue.

Windows 10 in the meantime is able to display the entire Xara Designer UI natively in high resolution (for example at 200 % dpi) -- only the viewport in which the drawing itself appears remains in low resolution with the respective Windows advanced scaling settings.

Maybe they can at least fix this part of the issue which certainly shouldn't require recoding the entire user interface.

Otherwise, everyone with reasonably professional requirements will soon end up switching to Affinity Designer (or some other viable alternative).

Xara-Magix, mind my words

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Originally Posted by David.P

I can't believe that it seems to be necessary to tutor the manufacturer on this on an internet forum, because they obviously don't know how to fix this -- meanwhile ridiculous -- issue.

Windows 10 in the meantime is able to display the entire Xara Designer UI natively in high resolution (for example at 200 % dpi) -- only the viewport in which the drawing itself appears remains in low resolution with the respective Windows advanced scaling settings.

Maybe they can at least fix this part of the issue which certainly shouldn't require recoding the entire user interface.

Otherwise, everyone with reasonably professional requirements will soon end up switching to Affinity Designer (or some other viable alternative).

Xara-Magix, mind my words

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I wonder how many new users are seeing this behaviour and asking for a refund already?

A commercial enterprise needs to focus on what will make it money and that is what I believe xara are doing

Every proposed improvement has to be weighed up and consideration given as to whether the money would be better spent elsewhere

I would not presume to 'tutor' the company because I am sure they know what they are doing

Personally I would prefer a mesh warp tool that warps vectors, which E3 had in 2003, a greyscale workspace, a vector freehand drawing tool that is useful for fast expressive strokes which inkscape ( that is free ) has had for ages...the list goes on

I will and have requested these things but it is for xara to decide

Whilst they would prefer it otherwise no doubt, I don't think they can afford to lose sleep over customers switching to affinity or illustrator - there will be many reasons for this when it happens - and besides, it is very much a myth that there is only one program you need that does everything, pushed by marketing blurb

I would suggest most of us use whatever works best for the task

Not a solution but helps us from squinting: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/sys...wnloads/zoomit

If you accept defaults then Ctrl+4 toggle offers a Live Zoom.

Acorn

Quote:

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Originally Posted by David.P

Windows 10 in the meantime is able to display the entire Xara Designer UI natively in high resolution (for example at 200 % dpi) -- only the viewport in which the drawing itself appears remains in low resolution with the respective Windows advanced scaling settings.

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windows is using the graphics card gpu to do this

however, for it's drawing window, xara has it's own rendering engine which, back in the day before gpu and fast cpu, gave it a distinct edge

I suspect that windows cannot access this, in fact as it is proprietary it would be remarkable if it could, and so that is the issue

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...certainly shouldn't require recoding the entire user interface.

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maybe not, but the only ones who can be certain of what it does entail are those who maintain it... I seem to recall it was written at machine code level for speed, that's a highly technical task