Tiny fonts on a 4K screen

[Marek Gierliński]

I have recently bought two 4K 24" screens with pixel density of about 185 PPI. I have an Ubuntu box to work with them. Alas, though I can scale system fonts and menus, all the menus and pop-up windows in IGV are tiny. Almost unreadable, which makes IGV almost unusable.

I changed the "default font" in preferences, but it only affected track descriptions.

Could you allow for font scaling in all menus? With more high-density screens coming more and more people will experience this problem.

Marek

[Jim Robinson]

I will look into it. We aren't explicitly choosing most of the fonts that aren't scaling for you, they are Java defaults.   Perhaps you could investigate changing Java default fonts? 

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[Jim Robinson]

Hi Marek,

I made a quick change that will sett all system fonts to the default font size in the preferences.   It doesn't look great because Java is apparently just pixel-expanding the font,  but perhaps it will be usable now.  You can try this change at

http://www.broadinstitute.org/software/igv/download_snapshot

This is a quick interim fix, not the resolution of the issue.

Jim

[Marek Gierliński]

Hi Jim,

That's brilliant! It works very well on menus. The only problem now is overlapping text, like in this example:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oon0lsql4eo12n8/IGV_preferences.png?dl=0

But, apart from that, scaled fonts look very well, not pixelated at all. Here is a comparison of the old and new:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zbn37thizf3ej4l/IGV_scaling.png?dl=0

Thank you very much for your swift response,

Marek

[Jim Robinson]

Thanks for the screenshots.  Yes I know about the problems with the preferences window, the content in the tabs is manually layed out and not font size aware.  I have fixed the first 2 tabs in that regard, and will work my way through the others.

This solution is a bit crude,  it sets all font sizes to the single value specified in the igv preferences, but its preferable to tiny fonts. 

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[Andrewww3w]

Hello All,

I have the same problem. To increase computational power, I have bought a new machine with a 4K resolution screen. On this screen IGV is almost unusable because fonts are too small. I have set the default font size in Preferences to Arial 24, which helps a bit with track name fonts, but nothing more. I tried to download the IGVDistribution snapshot.zip at the mentioned linked, but didn't know how to run it (is it a completely new version of the software)?

Any suggestions on solving the problem?

Thanks,

Andrew

[James Robinson]

Its hard to get a grip on this problem as it happens with some high rez screens but not others.  The development team uses mac Retina screens.  

What is your hardware?

What version of Java are your running?

How are you starting IGV?

To run the binary distributions unzip and double-click the "igv.bat" file  (I assume this is a windows machine, if not run  "igv.sh".

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[James Robinson]

Here's one possible solution.   I don't have a Windows machine to test it with, and it involves editing the registry.   I will continue searching for a better solution.

http://ignitiontips.blogspot.com/2016/07/java-and-high-dpi-displays.html

[Andrewww3w]

Hello,

I have an ASUS machine i7 16GB ram, with the latest windows installed.

I am running Jave version jre-8u66-windows-x64.exe (this Java version is required to run other programs).

I start IGV by clicking on a desktop icon (which, very strangely, is not like the icon I have on my old i3; this new icon has no IGV logo). When I click on this icon, a small dos windows open and later I get the IGV window.

PS: I have downloaded and unzipped the IGVDistribution_Snapshot.zip, then clicked on igv.bat, but nothing happens, I get exactly the same screen.

PS PS: there is another problem: I cannot enlarge the left IGV window containing the track names.

Thanks,

Andrew

[James Robinson]

OK,  this is a hard problem.   Its a Java bug,  possibly fixed in Java 9 but that's not certain.   There are some patches suggested in various threads,  I don't have any way to test them as I don't have a high dpi windows machine.    Are you willing to test for us?    If so I will have something to try by the end of the day or tomorrow.

What do you mean you clicked on "igv.bat" and nothing happend?   You should see a black terminal screen,  then after a short delay the IGV window should appear.

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[Andrewww3w]

Thank you Jim,

we are willing to try any solution you might have. igv.bat works as you say, the IGV window appears, however, the fonts size remains the same, so no improvements.

Andrea

[James Robinson]

Andrea,  could you download and try this version?  http://data.broadinstitute.org/igv/projects/downloads/IGV_2.3.92.zip

After unzipping click "igv.bat" as usual.   A black console window will appear, and after a few seconds the app.

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[Andrewww3w]

Hello Jim,

this new version you created now works. I have set the font size preferences again to Arial 12 and it looks like it was on my old i3. The only thing is that on a the 4k screen it looks like being a bit "faded" or under standard resolution, but this happens also with other software on 4K. The left column with the track names still remaines frozen (you cannot enlarge it). Overall, it is now usable again.

Thanks a lot!

Andrea

[James Robinson]

Great, thanks for the report.    WRT the track name panel,  I don't recall an option to change the size,  were you able to in previous versions?   I will look into adding an option to do that.

Longer term  I will be migrating the user interface to a different technology  (JavaFX  instead of Swing) that does not have the highDPI problem.   Hopefully that will look sharper.   In the meantime I will post the zip on the downloads page.

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[Jim Robinson]

The Windows download for high res screens is now posted on the Downloads page, and the URL is http://data.broadinstitute.org/igv/projects/downloads/IGV_Win_2.3.92.zip.   Note this differs from the URL you tested, which conflicted with the standard binary download.

[Andrewww3w]

Thank you Jim!

About the track name column, I actually can't recall how it worked on the old i3, but you may be right when you say it isn't an implemented feature.

Thanks again for resolving the issue, IGV is a great program!

Andrew

[Malcolm Cook]

I am having similar legibility issues running under linux - namely the font size in the track attribute display is very hard to read.  Do you have any suggestions for improvement here?

Thanks,

Malcolm Cook

[Breda Genetics srl]

Hi Malcolm,

maybe this can help you: this is the answer I got from IGV some months ago:

The Windows download for high res screens is now posted on the Downloads page, and the URL is http://data.broadinstitute.org/igv/projects/downloads/IGV_Win_2.3.92.zip.   Note this differs from the URL you tested, which conflicted with the standard binary download.

Best wishes,

Andrea

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[Malcolm Cook]

Thanks for the suggestion Andrea, but I am not experiencing the issue on a Windows machine, but rather Linux...

~ Malcolm Cook

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[James Robinson]

There is currently no solution for linux under Java 8, other than reduce your screen resolution.   We are working on support for Java 9,  where this bug <might> be fixed,  but it is a non-trivial task and I can't give you an ETA at this time.

[Jim Robinson]

Malcolm et al,  could someone with a Linux machine try this  (change 2 to whatever your scaling factor is)?

java -Dsun.java2d.uiScale=2 -jar some_application.jar

Taken from:   https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#Java_applications 

[Malcolm Cook]

Yes

I see no difference between entering  " -Dsun.java2d.uiScale=1" or " -Dsun.java2d.uiScale=8" 

as the value in  "IcedTea-Web Control Panel" > "JVM Settings" 

I also tried inserting those lines into the call to `java` found in igv.sh from a fresh download of binary distribution, but, still no difference in as far as I can see

In all cases I loaded a bam file and a sample attributes file and the appearance seemed identical in all regards.

I am running on CentOS7 if that matters.

Cheers,

Malcolm

~ Malcolm Cook

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[Malcolm Cook]

BTW, all this said, I find that with "IGV > Preferences > General > Default Font > Change"  I can change font face and font size, and although the change to the face is reflected immediately in the display of both track names and sample attributes, the change to the size is NOT reflected until I restart IGV, and then only in the track name, not in the sample attributes at all, which is where I am having legibility issues.

Is it possibly because they are rendered differently due to their being rotated?

~Malcolm

~ Malcolm Cook

[James Robinson]

I'm not sure, but changing font size is not the solution for highDPI screens.   The property setting was worth a try. 

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[Malcolm Cook]

Hi James, 

My fault for chiming in on the wrong thread.  

My display is not high DPI.  

If that matters.

The issue is that I have some control over font family / size for name panel but none for attribute names which appear quite small and barely legible.

Sorry for the confusion, and thanks for your helps.

~Malcolm

~ Malcolm Cook

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[James Robinson]

If its a 4k screen with tiny fonts its high dpi

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[Malcolm Cook]

Hi Jim,

The original poster on this thread had 4K.  

I don't.

My screen is Lenovo 24" with max resolution of 1920x1200 

So perhaps my issue is different, but I still have one.

Perhaps my fonts are not as tiny as the OP, but I find them VERY SMALL and hard to read at  1920x1200 .  Not impossible.  Just hard.  And only in the vertical text displaying sample attributes.

~ Malcolm Cook

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[James Robinson]

The "4K" doesn't refer to logical pixels  (e.g. 1920x1200).    Still, you might have a different issue,  I'm not familiar with that display.

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