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Ancient X11 scaling technology

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283 points todsacerdoti | 7 comments | 24 Jun 25 18:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.834s | source | bottom
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amiga386 ◴[24 Jun 25 22:55 UTC] No.44371936[source]▶
It's not "can you provide the screen DPI to a window?" people bemoan, it's "can you draw one window across two screens with differing DPIs, transparent to the application?"
replies(3): >>44373475 #>>44374976 #>>44376314 #
1. kelnos ◴[25 Jun 25 03:46 UTC] No.44373475[source]▶
You can absolutely do that on X11, but you have to do it in the client, and no one cares to do it.
replies(2): >>44374620 #>>44378572 #
2. em-bee ◴[25 Jun 25 07:41 UTC] No.44374620[source]▶
if you have to do it in the client, aka the application, then it's not transparent to the application
replies(3): >>44375787 #>>44376620 #>>44377419 #
3. p_l ◴[25 Jun 25 10:54 UTC] No.44375787[source]▶
It's not transparent on Wayland or Windows (no idea about mac) either if you want actually properly drawn stuff.

Well, ok, on Windows if you keep to certain standard elements of Windows API and only use standard widgets you could get close to transparency.

4. rbanffy ◴[25 Jun 25 12:41 UTC] No.44376620[source]▶
It'll not be transparent to an application using basic X APIs, but nothing prevents a higher level UI toolkit from implementing it properly.
5. yjftsjthsd-h ◴[25 Jun 25 13:58 UTC] No.44377419[source]▶
If we can require applications to draw their own window controls, I think we can ask them to handle their pixel densities.
replies(1): >>44379495 #
6. account42 ◴[25 Jun 25 15:42 UTC] No.44378572[source]▶
No, you can't have a window with a different pixel size on one screen and another. Trying to emulate this using two windows would not achieve a smooth experience.

OTOH it is questionable if this is really all that important. Most of the time if a window spans more than one screen it's temporary because you are just moving the window from one screen to another.

7. em-bee ◴[25 Jun 25 16:59 UTC] No.44379495{3}[source]▶
that's a good point. window controls should be at the proper scale too.