Author Topic: Garbled/scrunched text, 1920 x 1080/6:10 laptop question  (Read 8428 times)

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Offline Tatterly (OP)

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Re: Garbled/scrunched text, 1920 x 1080/6:10 laptop question
« Reply #15 on: January 24, 2016, 04:13:57 AM »
Adding back old posts (thanks, Lazarus) for purpouses of getting help for myself and/or those with similar problems.

I.
MarcAFK - Thanks, friend but no dice.   You see, that was one of the first things I tried after I started experimenting on my own.   I've run it both with and without cleartype (my default preference is off, clear type has always made my eyes ache) but to no success. 

Vortex421 - Thanks; I really don't like the idea of cluttering up forums, but I'll hold out any hope I can.   I don't mind if any possible answer makes me look like the world's biggest moron for not having figured it out, so long as it leads somewhere.  .  .   Anyway, to answer your questions:

*Using the same monitor as before. 
*Urls enclosed (Thanks Erik for repairing their functionality!): With CTT / Without CTT

Don't feel obligated to respond quickly, as I'm off for work in a few minutes, but any advice is appreciated.    :)
Edit: There were attachments here. They're gone, now.

II.
Erik Luken: Hello again, and thank you; unfortunately, I always knew I was destined for greatness, as I suppose I think I might be one of those 1%. Ahahaha! I've inclosed a status window in my crop of images this time, and I'll go over emphatically what they are; I didn't include a picture of every combination of settings, as I believe that'd get cumbersome, but...

Vortex421: Correct! Win7 Classic, 1920 x 1080, with that being the native resolution. More on that in a bit, as well as font sizing.

(Thanks, but that's actually the beautiful set of backgrounds that come with the Aurora portable edition wrapper. My own (I included it because, why not?) is set out to remind me that even though my heart turns home in longing, across the voids between, I'll know beyond the spaceways that the hills of Earth are green. Even a cog can dream of the stars, after all... :) )

Mor: Unfortunately, I've used the default font/DPI settings in Windows, and a whole slew of different settings as well. I think I've mentioned, but since it doesn't count unless I've got hard proof...

* To show that I believe I've tried what you and Erik Luken recommend. Thanks again for fixing the links, Erik, much better. So:
   *Monitor default size is 1920 x 1080. I've also played around with at 1366/60 x 768, even though I don't think that should change anything.
   *I've tried the following combinations of display-altered font; 8, 9, and 10-pt adjustments as seen in the leftmost field. You can see the difference in the active bar for Aurora, but not in the actual text itself.
   *My default DPI is the smallest possible setting, 100%, as seen in the top-right image, and referenced by myself earlier. I have attempted the larger settings because I'm a glutton for punishment, as well as altering the DPI smaller via regedit. Which my computer didn't play too nicely with but, that's just how things are. It also didn't solve the problem...
   *Minus 1366/60 x 768, I have tried the following in (I believe, it gets repetitive after awhile) all possible combinations with each other. E.G, 1920 x 1080 + DPI 100% + making sure active and inactive system fonts are at 8-pt, versus 1920 x 1080 + DPI 125% + 9-pt system font, etc.

Maybe I'm missing what you all mean by the Windows font size being set oddly, but it does not seem to be the problem at the moment.
Edit: I just copy-pasted en masse, and now everything looks like it works right?  I'm confused, but happy!
« Last Edit: January 24, 2016, 11:03:41 AM by Tatterly »
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Garbled/scrunched text, 1920 x 1080/6:10 laptop question
« Reply #16 on: January 24, 2016, 10:31:49 AM »
I don't see any links to fix?
 
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Offline db48x

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Re: Garbled/scrunched text, 1920 x 1080/6:10 laptop question
« Reply #17 on: January 24, 2016, 11:21:10 AM »
   *I've tried the following combinations of display-altered font; 8, 9, and 10-pt adjustments as seen in the leftmost field. You can see the difference in the active bar for Aurora, but not in the actual text itself.

Have you tried setting the "Window Text" font size in addition to the "Message Text" size? You can set them all independently.
 
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Offline Tatterly (OP)

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Re: Garbled/scrunched text, 1920 x 1080/6:10 laptop question
« Reply #18 on: January 25, 2016, 08:39:31 AM »
db48x - You are referring to the window colour + appearance settings, right? Yes; I've done it 'by-item', i.e. active title bar (the first option that has a text setting), icon, and so and so.
I'm assuming the fonttype isn't the problem, I have used Tahoma and Segoe UI in my tests, the former being the default fonttype and the latter being one I vaguely recall as a standard.
 

Offline Vortex421

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Re: Garbled/scrunched text, 1920 x 1080/6:10 laptop question
« Reply #19 on: January 26, 2016, 10:24:01 AM »
Tatterly,

Man, this seriously has me stumped!  Not giving up on it... but trying to figure out what would be causing this as you seem to have ruled out most everything else and a part of me says that maybe your Windows install is at fault. :P

This is a laptop you're using correct?  And we can verify that the laptop screen is capable of 1080p resolution?  Can you post a screenshot of the Screen Resolution screen?  (Where you would go to change your screen res) 
 
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Offline clement

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Re: Garbled/scrunched text, 1920 x 1080/6:10 laptop question
« Reply #20 on: January 26, 2016, 03:11:59 PM »
This has been an issue in Aurora since Windows 7 came out and Microsoft made the decision to enforce High DPI scaling in the how it renders fonts when the display device of a machine can render above a certain DPI. I ran into this issue back in 2012 when my company upgraded our development team's laptops to Windows 7 machines running at 1900x1080 (1080P) up from 1280x1024.

Here is a link to a post discussing this issue back then: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=5370.msg55154#msg55154
Generally, while playing Aurora you can adjust your font size to 125% and most text will fit unless it is a long label.

Here is an article from the Windows 7 engineering team explaining the drivers for that decision: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2008/09/13/follow-up-on-high-dpi-resolution.aspx

A systemic fix to Aurora would be to change the font being used by the application. Most VB6 applications that use the default font are using Microsoft Sans Serif (Bitmap) font. Because it is a bitmap it cannot be scaled properly via the High DPI scaling. The High DPI scaling should work properly when the application in question is using a Truetype font. The easiest way to fix this would be to change Aurora to use the Microsoft Sans Serif (Truetype) font. This should help Windows 7 and higher work with the fonts in a more scalable fashion. I say should, because the application framework (VB6) is not DPI aware so all of the screen elements will not scale properly, however with font scaling correctly, the inconvenience should be smaller.

 
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Offline Tatterly (OP)

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Re: Garbled/scrunched text, 1920 x 1080/6:10 laptop question
« Reply #21 on: January 27, 2016, 09:43:29 AM »
Vortex421 - Thank you so much for persisting; I think clement has it solved, but I truly appreciate both your patience and resolve. Here's to hoping next time, I'll be able to contribute to someone else's thread as you've contributed to mine.  :) For reference though, there's a screen resolution link earlier, ctrl-f "To show" and look at that link. Or just use this one...

clement - Ah, truly... That's awful. I had no clue about Microsoft's DPI standards - I'll try running this at 125% DPI (I thought I'd tried that earlier and gotten a bad run of it, but maybe not?) when I return from work. If that doesn't work, you've given me a good idea for my next attempt; I run a partition of Mint linux on my home computer. I shall try running Aurora on that and Wine about things further if that doesn't work, haha!..

That read you linked was rather interesting, by the by. I had no idea that separate scaling was such an issue (at least at the time Microsoft pushed Win7); naturally, there are some claims I take with a grain of salt, but all the same. Moving right along though, I shall try your solution, as well as the solution posted at the tail end of your first link, then I'll try running it in Mint. I've no idea how friendly wine is with Aurora, but it might be interesting to find out...

Anyway, thank you all for your time. Hopefully we'll see each other next, out in the stars...  :)

Edit: Well, tried adjusting DPI to 125%, restarting, text was still deformed. Not feeling too optimistic, turned DPI back to 100%, restarted, tried the other option given, and...


Solution Found:

Yahoooo! It looks like this works. To make it so that anyone with the similar problem won't end up running from one topic to another, here is the full solution that worked for me. I hope it'll help anyone else with similar problems:

Go into the registry - start, run, regedit.
Find the following keys, and change them to the following:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts]
"MS Sans Serif 8,10,12,14,18,24"="SSERIFE.FON"
"MS Serif 8,10,12,14,18,24"="SERIFE.FON"
"Courier 10,12,15"="COURE.FON"
Reboot.

Thank you to all who helped, I can't wait to finally dive in to the fiction and works you've created, since I've been holding away from this place mostly on a desire to keep things mysterious. One last time - thank you for your patience, curiousity, and at last a solution.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2016, 09:50:31 AM by Tatterly »
 

Offline clement

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Re: Garbled/scrunched text, 1920 x 1080/6:10 laptop question
« Reply #22 on: January 28, 2016, 12:51:29 PM »
I shall try running Aurora on that and Wine about things further if that doesn't work, haha!..

Love it!

Unfortunately, my machine already has those values for those registry keys... however I have played long enough to know what the text should say everywhere it is garbled. I am glad it is all better now for you.
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Garbled/scrunched text, 1920 x 1080/6:10 laptop question
« Reply #23 on: January 28, 2016, 01:30:59 PM »
I added the solution from @Tatterly to the wiki.

Offline Mor

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Re: Garbled/scrunched text, 1920 x 1080/6:10 laptop question
« Reply #24 on: January 28, 2016, 05:53:05 PM »
I think that a general WARNING is in order. Editing the registry can effect other programs in an unpredictable way and generally isn't advised to those who are unfamiliar with it. However if you do, BACKUP the default values. (which might be different from one OS to another).

I have avoided this discussion because I am not familiar with how DPI etc works and have no way of testing this. However, I have attached my settings. As you can see I am using 100% fonts, with clear type enabled. if you have some DPI issue you can change it or even turn on XP setting. And finally there is a restore default fonts (which I assume might be of useful in case someone decided to mess around with some fonts)