H&M on Surface Pro 3

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Martin Wynne
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Joined: Mon May 12, 2003 3:21 pm
Location: West of the Severn, UK

Re: H&M on Surface Pro 3

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Hi Alexander,

Many thanks for such a detailed reply. I never had any use or contact with Vista so those changes went over my head when I jumped from XP to Win7.

I can see that you have a massive task ahead to change everything for the latest screens. I hope it all works out without too much grief.

I'm going to have to do a lot of experimenting to get the best results with my stuff -- thanks for a few pointers. I'm not too bothered about the controls and fonts, but I do see red when what should be a crisp single-pixel line at Canvas.Pen.Width=1 appears as a fuzzy line instead. It seems to defeat the whole point of having such a hi-res screen.

thanks again,

Martin.
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Alexander Halser
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Re: H&M on Surface Pro 3

Unread post by Alexander Halser »

Make sure you include CHM files in the testing, because that's the next caveat we are working on 8)

When you use Webhelp for help, the default browser will start and it will most likely be at a zoom factor of 150%. The browser translates all pixel-based coordinates based on the zoom factor and font sizes will be scaled as well, no matter if you define them in point, pixel or "em".

CHM is different. Because it hosts an embedded version of MSIE and this embedded version has no option to define the zoom factor. It stays at 100%. If your application is not dpi-aware, the help window will not be, either, because it is a child process of your application. Hence, the OS will upscale the entire window at runtime if the system is beyond 120 dpi. That looks a bit blurry, but the highres monitor will forgive that. If your application is dpi-aware, the help file is, too. Result: it's not upscaled at runtime and the content will be pretty small.

Can you check this on your Surface Pro? How does the CHM help of H&M look if you (a) open it from H&M and (b) open it from Windows Explorer? I am afraid, it's content is barely readable. One more thing we have to work out before release of 6.5.2 8)
Alexander Halser
Senior Software Architect, EC Software GmbH
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Martin Wynne
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Location: West of the Severn, UK

Re: H&M on Surface Pro 3

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Alexander Halser wrote:Can you check this on your Surface Pro? How does the CHM help of H&M look if you (a) open it from H&M and (b) open it from Windows Explorer? I am afraid, it's content is barely readable. One more thing we have to work out before release of 6.5.2 8)
Hi Alexander,

Surface Pro3 at 144dpi

a) CHM in build 2994 opened ok. The TOC is fine and easily readable. The topic text is very small but just about readable with my poor old eyes. Some young users might think it is ok as it stands. But it zooms ok on Ctrl+mouse wheel, and also with the pinch-stretch gestures on the touch screen, so it is not really a problem at all. The screenshot images toggle ok and also zoom without getting too blurry. I would say it is fine as it stands if users zoom it up a bit. The difficult area is the entry fields for the keywords and search terms, which are very small in a tiny grey font and very difficult to see. I couldn't find any way to zoom them up.

b) CHM opened directly in the HTML Help Viewer is exactly the same. I can't see any differences.

I tried looking at a CHM file from a different application. The search entry field is about the same size but a much clearer font. Here is a screenshot of the two together. This will all look much larger and ok on a lower res screen of course:
hm_chm.png
Hope this helps. I'm not using CHM, only webhelp, so it won't be a problem for me thank goodness.

regards,

Martin.
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Martin Wynne
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Location: West of the Severn, UK

Re: H&M on Surface Pro 3

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Hi Alexander,

Having looked at my screenshot in the light of day I can now see that the reason the tiny CHM entry field is so difficult to see is that there is no anti-aliasing of the font.

Whereas in the CHM for FlashBack there is anti-aliasing (colour fringes). The font seems to be the same. :?
hm_chm1.png
Hope this helps in some way.

Martin.
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