Support high-DPI monitors

[sludwig]

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).

[Albacore]

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.

[Acorn]

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

Acorn

[Albacore]

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.

[PhilM]

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

[amoore]

Thanks, Phil.

[handrawn]

This all requires significant programming effort.

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

[handrawn]

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

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...