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Newbie Joined: 04 May 2010 Posts: 7

I ended up with corrupted files on my curing system and had to reinstall both my curing system and Cmud on my new computer that uses Windows 7. I got the system and Cmud both working but when I start up Cmud, everything is TINY. It's not just the font, it's the tabs and file associations...it's EVERYTHING. How can I fix this? When I raise the font size, the tabs and space/size of the command bars and other things are still so tiny I can't read them. Any help?

Apprentice Joined: 03 Feb 2007 Posts: 170

Lower screen resolution?

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 5:09 pm

Fonts, tabs, etc use "pixels". If your new computer has a higher screen resolution, then the same number of pixels takes less physical space on your screen, so everything is smaller. Windows has a Font DPI setting that can be used to scale fonts to a larger number of "dots per inch", but that doesn't cause anything else in Windows to scale properly.

For example, an icon that is 32x32 pixels will still be 32x32 pixels and will just look smaller.

This is one of the reason why I don't actually run my computer at the highest resolution it is capable of...stuff just gets too small.

In CMUD you can go into the Preferences and then click the Styles tab and increase the font size for various elements. But that won't scale anything else. The Windows DPI setting does a somewhat better job scaling *all* applications within Windows, but you'll still run into issues with some programs (including CMUD) that might cut off text if enough room wasn't provided in the program for the larger text.

All I can suggest is playing with different screen resolutions.

Also, BTW, this is the BETA forum and is only for discussion and bug reports for the CMUD Beta version. This should have probably been posted in the General CMUD Forum.

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 6:35 pm

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 7:47 pm

Yes, that's true, and I am using my native resolution even though my video card can generate higher resolutions. And you are correct that Windows 7 does a better job at this.

In fact I just noticed that when you right-click on the Windows 7 desktop and then select "Personalize" and then click the "Display" link in the list on the left, the screen that you get allows you to change the size of stuff on the screen. Not sure if it just sets the font DPI or if Win7 has a real "zoom" feature like this, but it's worth a try.

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 8:00 pm

I just tried that and it prompts that you need to log off to apply the setting; in my mind that means it's messing with the DPI.

Another thought is that if everything is really so tiny I wonder if it's the problem people get when using something like Windows Blinds where it shrinks the windows to a silly size.

Check to see if you have a theme program installed and if you do add CMUD to the exception list.

Newbie Joined: 04 May 2010 Posts: 7

I've messed with the screen resolution and not had any luck, still the same issue. Funny thing is, the only places I have a problem with the size of everything is in Cmud and AIM, that's it. All my programs, pictures, other chat programs and web browser run normally and are fine.
Let's see if I can't get some help from somewhere else. Thanks for the help and sorry about posting in the wrong section.

Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2008 Posts: 105

I have this problem too with other programs you def aren't the only one, thankfully people are starting to wake up to the fact that a lot of people are running at 1920x, 2560x kind of resolutions, it was much worse a few years ago but more stuff seems to be compatible with the Windows DPI thing now though that may be also windows 7 being improved in that aspect I dunno. something def needs to be done to upsize whole programmes rather than only the text especially for older programs

Posted: Fri May 07, 2010 4:26 pm

The reason a lot of programs have trouble with this is because Microsoft really did a poor job with the whole font DPI stuff and have never made it easier for developers. It's getting better in Windows 7 with support for scalable PNG files rather than the old BMP files, but it's still a pain.

For example, think about the "tabs" displayed across the typical Options dialog in Windows. Those tabs are not stored or drawn as scalable vector graphics, they are stored as BMP images (see the Windows Theme files and stuff...everything is a BMP file). BMP files are raw pixel bitmaps. They do not scale.

So now your User changes their font DPI to make all of the fonts bigger. But the BMP image of the tabs is still the same size and does not scale. So now the text shown on the tab is out of proportion to the tab itself.

Next, consider the various "checkboxes" and "radio options" shown on that Option dialog. When the developer created the dialog, they had to specify the X,Y location of each checkbox and radio button. Let's say that they choose the place the options in a vertical list with 4 pixels of vertical space between each option.

When the Font size changes, there is no way for the application to change the vertical space between then checkboxes. Windows still stores the same X,Y coordinate of the upper-left corner of each checkbox. So if the new font size is large enough, now each checkbox text line might be overlapping. Or maybe the new larger text is longer than before and now runs into the right-edge of the dialog and gets cut off.

In Delphi, there is an option to resize the dialogs automatically based upon the font DPI setting. That helps with the issue of cutting off text. But it still doesn't cause checkboxes, buttons, edit boxes, or any other widgets to move or resize to allow for the larger text. The X,Y coordinate of each widget still has the same value on the form.

Yes, this is basically a rant. My rant is that Windows was never designed in the first place to be a size-scalable operating system. It's getting better over time, but at it's core it still has lots of problems. With the success of other platforms, especially things like the iPhone, maybe this will continue to get better in the future.

But it is hell on developers trying to right software that supports newer scalability features and yet still needs to run on Windows XP where everything is still BMP bitmap based.