Background

See Alex Larsson's GUADEC talk: http://videos.guadec.org/2013/High%20res%20display%20support%20GNOME/

Testing

(Updating this to Fedora Workstation 21 alpha under VMWare Fusion 7... will update rest of page later.)

I am testing on a 15" Retina MacBook Pro (2880x1800 display), with Fedora 20 + Gnome 3.12 prerelease packages in Parallels 9. Will also test on a bare install to rule out Parallels video driver for some issues.

If your system doesn't pick up the high resolution mode by default, run:

• $ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 2

and restart the desktop.

Do not try to just adjust GDK_SCALE environment variable, that doesn't cover everything properly.

Also testing with a direct install of Fedora 20 on Dell XPS 13 'Sputnik 2' -- this has a 1920x1080 13" screen, so at 2x scaling things are too big to use comfortably but at 1x they're too small. To approximate 1.5x scaling, set the GNOME scaling factor to 2 as above and also scale the screen up virtually:

• $ xrandr --output eDP1 --scale-from 2560x1440 --panning 2560x1440

This will be slightly blurry as drawing is done at 2560x1440 and scaled down to 1920x1080 in the display, but will exercise all the 2x scaled code paths and approximates the on-screen size of a full 2x-density display.

GNOME apps with issues

Todo: file bugs & make some patches

• Help
  • web view is low-res/blurry
• Character Map
  • right-click zoom view of chars is low-res/blurry
• Shotwell
  • thumbnails are low-res
  • some icons are low-res
  • photo editing canvas appears to be low-res
• Videos
  • channel icons are low-res
• Software
  • package icons and screenshots are low-res
• Empathy
  • account type icons are low-res
• Documents
  • document thumbnails are low-res
  • Google Drive docs are displayed low-res (does this use evince as a component or something?)
• Document Viewer (evince)
  • page thumbnails are low-res
  • page display is low-res

    • https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=723431 (patches in progress on bug [as of March 2014])

• Evolution
  • online/offline icon in corner is low-res
  • icons in message list are low-res
  • entire message panel is low-res
• Web (Epiphany)
  • entire web view contents are low-res
• Aisleriot
  • couple of icons are low-res
  • bitmap card themes show default svg theme instead (may not be dpi-related)
  • hand cursor is low-res?
• Pitivi
  • some icons are low-res
  • timeline ruler is low-res
  • timeline doesn't display properly (may be Parallels video driver issue, test on raw install)
  • clip thumbnails are low-res

Components needing fixing

• WebKitGtk

  • things appear right size, but blurry/low-res

Non-GNOME Gtk2 apps needing Gtk3 porting

• Firefox
  • Behavior: UI text size correct, everything else shows tiny
  • Gtk2 workaround: set the CSS pixel ratio to 2 manually in about:config

  • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=627699 - Gtk3 port has landed as a build option

    • with cairo-gtk3 toolkit build, Firefox displays correct size but blurry

  • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=975919 - Gtk3 HiDpi - there is a patch that seems to work! [October 2014]

• Gimp
  • in progress in Gimp 3.0 branch? check on this
  • gtk3-port branch in gimp is being intermittently rebased, so needs slightly old gegl to build against atm
  • constantly spews "Gdk-WARNING **: gdk-frame-clock: layout continuously requested, giving up after 4 tries" and is hella slow
  • theme icons not updated for HiDPI
  • drawing is pretty flaky

  • https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=725263

• Inkscape
  • Gtk3 in progress on master branch

    • http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/GTK%2B_3_migration

      • configure with --enable-gtk3-experimental

    • general gtk3 bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape?field.searchtext=gtk3

    • Retina bug for OS X: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1216795

    • filed a HiDPI bug for Linux/GTK3: https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1285887

• IntelliJ IDEA

  • see http://bulenkov.com/2013/06/23/retina-support-in-oracle-jdk-1-7/ for some notes on OS X

  • probably needs support added to the AWT/Swing backend in OpenJDK
• OpenJDK

  • awt/swing ^ see above

• Audacity
  • Behavior: text is scaled properly but many widgets and icons are tiny
  • wxWidgets-based
    • Gtk3 support appears to exist in wxWidgets 3.0, does this just need packaging, or also porting of Audacity?

Misc notes

• Occasionally under Parallels, the shell seems to crash (?) and screen resolution briefly reverts to a tiny resolution; when this happens, Gnome Shell-drawn window decorations come up small instead of full-size. This may be an issue with the Parallels video driver.
• Under Parallels, some apps such as Maps and Cheese don't properly render their background shadow effects. This may be an issues with the Parallels video driver -- test me on raw install.

• My raw install of Fedora 20 on 2012 Retina MacBook Pro is temporarily blocked by missing wifi drivers. Yay!