3

I have a Windows 8.1 laptop (Dell XPS) with a high-DPI screen (15" 3840x2160), and two external monitors which are normal DPI (19" 1920x1200). (No font changes from defaults.)

Windows 8 seems to know about the varying DPI, and most things work very well. If I move a window from the high-DPI screen to a low-DPI screen, then the window will spontaneously change size so the text is readable on the current display.

Programs which work fine:

  • "gitk", launched from a Cygwin terminal using X-Win.
  • notepad
  • Almost everything else

A few programs cause trouble. They have tiny, unreadable text, on both the high-DPI screen and the low-DPI monitors. Examples include:

  • JMeter, launched from maven (a Java Swing application)
  • "git-gui", launched from a Cygwin terminal using X-Win.
  • The windows shell, "Command Prompt"

(Sometimes the problem comes and goes depending on whether the laptop booted up while connected to the low-DPI monitors or if I booted without them and then subsequently plugged them in (related to How do I make Windows scale the taskbar correctly after I switch to monitors with different DPIs? ).)

  • Is there any way I can scale up the window for a specified application, when that app is not Windows DPI aware? The Windows magnifier is quite clunky for this.
  • Is there any way I can override the declared DPI for a specified application without affecting other apps?

Here is a screenshot showing Command Prompt, Notepad, Git Gui and Gitk on the same screen:

screenshot showing Command Prompt, Notepad, Git Gui and Gitk on the same screen

Community
  • 1
Rich
  • 274

2 Answers2

2

Applications must handle the WM_DPICHANGED message and they have to support PROCESS_PER_MONITOR_DPI_AWARE in the application manifest (<dpiAware>true/PM</dpiAware>).

When no app supports it you only have to request an app update from the developers. We can't fix this for you here.

magicandre1981
  • 99,606
-1

Did you try and edit the font setting in the top three lines of ~/.gitk? To change the fonts and/or sizes.

  • set mainfont {Helvetica 12}

  • set textfont {Courier 12}

  • set uifont {Helvetica 12 bold}

If you editing the .gitk in cygwin doesn't work try and remove the gitk config file.

$ rm ~/.gitk

And run again.

blackjack929
  • 304