Operating systems like Windows or macOS support scaling for displays with high DPI (else the application window would be tiny). But if the application isn't aware of this (and not able to scale by itself), the operating system will do it for the application. The result is a blurry application when the scale factor is to high (standard for 4k is about 300% scale).
As there are increasing numbers of displays with high DPI the lack of support for this scaling features in Notes leads to a unsharp, blurry application UI which looks aweful.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/hidpi/high-dpi-desktop-application-development-on-windows
Clarification (as demanded): I'll try to clarify this issue, but the comments are worth reading, they explain the issue very well. So, in simple terms:
- There are increasing numbers of hiRes displays (>FullHD). But their physical size doesnt grow linear to their resolution (as an example a 13 inch display with 4k). That's where dpi (or ppi) of a screen becomes important. Every modern operating system can handle this.
- Applications have to be dpi aware, i.e. they have to scale themselves according to the dpi-settings of the screen. The challenge is to scale native and not based on bitmaps which can only be interpolated (results look more or less blurry/pixelated). Best approach is vector-based.
- The windows version of Notes 11 (or 10) doesnt scale the application by itself. The macOS version does it properly.
- Thats the reason why windows has to do it for Notes. But the operating system hasnt many options left to scale an application. So the result is a blurry or pixelated Notes.
- There are workarounds in the wild (NO_DPIAWARE=false OR setting the DPI-mode directly in the application properties OR manipulating the application manifest, etc), but all of them break at some point and lead to issues.
- I'll attach some pictures that show the issue (and comparing to outlook) and some that show how it could look if it would scale. (look at them in "full size" else you wont see much)
We use Gedys Intraware and on my 16'' notebook with 2560x1600 pixels i'd like to use 125% or 150% scaling but that destroyes forms in Gedys and partly they become covered by some kind of white area. It makes Gedys unsable.
Greetings from Germany.
I can only agree with the previous speakers.
This urgently needs to be remedied, as the "search for symbols" is just terrible.
In hopeful expectation I remain with kind regards
The issue is that the text is blurry if Windows is scaled to anything other than 100%, eg. 150%.
As an example, 300% is the default scaling factor in Windows 10 for a 4K notebook display on a 13" device.
There is another "workaround" by overwriting the scaling behavior of the application, but this works just to up to 150% for Notes:
https://www.dominopoint.it/dominopoint/dominopoint_blog.nsf/dx/notes-w-windows-10-appare-sfuocato
This issue has to be fixed ASAP.
The issue is that Notes, Designer, and Admin all need to be updated so they are intelligent for different monitor DPIs and high-resolutions.
Here is a story of how this happens, and why the manifest work-around doesn't always work:
http://mattwhite.me/blog/2016/1/8/superb-fix-for-high-dpi-problems-with-notes-and-windows
Here is another attempt to deal with it via the manifest approach:
https://superuser.com/questions/1086279/ibm-domino-administrator-issue-with-high-dpi-display
This has the manifest "fix" documented well, but it doesn't always work across all MS Windows 10 installs.
Here is one of the old closed IBM tickets, where it was closed w/o resolution. Other than we aren't going to fix it in the near future:
https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1LO86603
This is a general 72/96 dpi issue; as we go to hi resolution monitors with lots of pixels in a denser dpi format, the old 10pt font now appears to be around 4pt. The scaling options 125%, 150%, etc. don't scale well and you can have blurry text. It's not just Notes, it's all older programs, see this general Lenovo discussion:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and-newer-T/T460-Blurry-display-and-scaling-issues/td-p/3368509