VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 22 2016 - 09:50:34 CDT

Hi,
  This is mainly due to limitations with the underlying FLTK and Tk
cross-platform windowing software being a pixel-based API from their
earliest days. Apple's solution for this with their retina displays was to
fool existing code to double its pixel-based font size so that when displayed
on high-DPI monitors it would look okay. I'm not presently aware of a
good solution for this with FLTK at present. You can read some other
commentary on the issue here:
  http://www.oyranos.org/2016/01/high-dpi-with-fltk/

Switching to different fonts requires re-packing widgets in windows
which is something the page above doesn't even get into. The issue for
VMD is that the FLTK window packing is/was done in pixel coordinates,
and there's not a way of adapting it automatically to fit a particular
size font like there should be. So at present dealing with a high-DPI
display is still a somewhat significant challenge.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 11:03:09AM +0200, Tatiana Kuznetsova wrote:
> Dear VMD developers,
>
> First impression, the VMD menu still requires a good deal of squinting
> on HiDPI screens of moderately sized laptop (Dell XPS 13 inch,
> 3200x1800). I searched the mailing list, this issue has been raised
> several times with VMD 1.9.2, with no real solution proposed so far.
> None of the Ubuntu 16.04 Tweak Tool options appears to affect either the
> main menu or its dropdown items. VMD only responds to changes in
> "Windows title font" by increasing or decreasing the titles accordingly.
> "System Settings" -- "Displays" -- "Scale fo menu and title bars"
> applies to title bars *only*, menu remains the same.
>
> While the default XTerm fonts are also minuscule, they can be set in
> ~/.Xresources. Xterm becomes readable after Xserver restart.
>
> Setting correct screen size values in newly created
> "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/xorg.conf" file results in xdpyinfo | grep
> -i dots being right about "resolution: 276x277 dots per inch".
> *BUT* the DPI value in /var/log/Xorg.0.log is reported as "DPI set to
> (96, 96)", and this looks like the value used by VMD.
>
> So far, the only way in both 1.9.2 and 1.9.3beta was to halve the
> display resolution.
>
> Best regards
>
> Tatiana Kuznetsova
> Department of Physics and Technology
> University of Bergen, Norway
>
> On 2016-07-21 23:35, John Stone wrote:
> >I've posted more VMD 1.9.3 beta 1 binaries today, including
> >32-bit Windows builds, and several special builds for batch mode
> >or parallel runs on Cray supercomputers, EGL-based off-screen rendering,
> >and I expect a more to follow tomorrow afternoon after further testing.
> >
> >Cheers,
> > John Stone
> > vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> >
> >On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 11:33:49PM -0500, John Stone wrote:
> >>Dear VMD-L,
> >> I've just start posting builds of VMD 1.9.3 beta 1 for
> >>download. I currently have two Linux builds, MacOS, and
> >>the Blue Waters MPI build posted. I expect to have several
> >>more builds posted tomorrow as compilations progress.
> >>
> >>I'll be populating the VMD 1.9.3 release page with descriptions of
> >>the various new features after I get the builds posted.
> >>
> >>Please give the new version a spin and let me know how well it
> >>works for you, and particularly if you encounter any problems.
> >>
> >>Cheers,
> >> John Stone
> >> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> >>
> >>--
> >>NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> >>Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> >>University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> >>http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Phone: 217-244-3349
> >>http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/ 

-- 
NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/           Phone: 217-244-3349
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/