View Proposal

---

Proposer

Adam Sampson

Title

Make X work for high-DPI displays

Goal

Identify and fix assumptions about display DPI in the X software stack

Description

The X11 graphics system has been widely used on Unix-like operating systems since the 1980s. It was originally designed to be resolution-independent, supporting high-DPI output devices such as printers in addition to regular displays. However, if you try using it on a high-DPI display these days, you will find that some of the libraries and server behaviour make assumptions about display resolution that are not appropriate for a modern 200+ DPI display (e.g. requiring low-resolution fonts or not computing spacing correctly in GUI layouts). As a result, people resort to ugly, inefficient Windows-style hacks such as pixel scaling - rather than using the display at its native resolution. Fix this - disable pixel scaling, configure X to run at the native DPI of a modern 4k display, try a range of applications and work out what's broken.

Resources

Background

Url

Difficulty Level

Moderate

Ethical Approval

None

Number Of Students

1

Supervisor

Adam Sampson

Keywords

x, graphics, linux, unix

Degrees

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Bachelor of Science in Computer Systems
Master of Engineering in Software Engineering
Master of Science in Computing (2 Years)
Master of Science in Information Technology (Software Systems)
Master of Science in Software Engineering
Bachelor of Science in Computing Science
Bachelor of Engineering in Robotics