fractional scaling in Fedora 36

[Anil Felipe Duggirala]

Hello everyone,
I have installed Fedora 36 on a high-dpi laptop (Del XPS 9550) and Gnome; Im having
trouble setting the scaling to 250% (200 is too small and 300 is too big).
I tried "enabling" fractional scaling by doing:  gsettings set org.gnome.mutter
experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"
This in fact allowed me to set the scaling to 250%, but then, when trying to open ANY
program, the window would appear and disappear instantly. I wasn't even able to set
the setting back to normal. I just reinstalled the whole system to get Gnome working again
on Wayland (Xorg was working still).
My questions:
1. Is there another way to enable fractional scaling? (Gnome and Wayland)
2. In terms of performance, setting the display resolution to a smaller value (than my
monitor default) is the same as using scaling?
3. Does fractional scaling work better in Xorg? how do you enable this in that case?
4. Does fractional scaling on Wayland affect performance compared to integer scaling?
5. Any other suggestions ?

Anil F

[Tim]

On Fri, 2022-05-13 at 08:47 -0500, Anil Felipe Duggirala wrote:
>  My questions:
>  1. Is there another way to enable fractional scaling? (Gnome and
>  Wayland) 
In my opinion scaling is a bad hack to avoid properly sizing a GUI to
the current screen resolution and dimensions, and produced no end of
rendering side effects when I messed with it in the past.

Have you tried simply setting appropriate font sizes?
 
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[Anil Felipe Duggirala]

On Sat, May 14 2022 at 11:33:17 AM +0930, Tim via users 
<users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  On Fri, 2022-05-13 at 08:47 -0500, Anil Felipe Duggirala wrote:
> >  My questions:
> >  1. Is there another way to enable fractional scaling? (Gnome and
> >  Wayland)
>  
>  In my opinion scaling is a bad hack to avoid properly sizing a GUI to
>  the current screen resolution and dimensions, and produced no end of
>  rendering side effects when I messed with it in the past. 
Hello Tim.
I don't know what you mean by "end of rendering".

>  
>  Have you tried simply setting appropriate font sizes?
>   
That is what Ive done so far. I installed gnome-tweaks and set the font 
"scaling factor" to 1.20.  And chose appropriate font size in apps like 
CLion.
I will continue to play with fonts to see if that works. My eyesight is 
not the best right now.
My screen is scaled at 200% at this point. Using no scaling would be 
impossible I think. This is a 4k resolution on a 15 inch screen.

thank you,

[John Pilkington]

On 14/05/2022 13:38, Anil Felipe Duggirala wrote:
>  
>  On Sat, May 14 2022 at 11:33:17 AM +0930, Tim via users 
>  <users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
> > On Fri, 2022-05-13 at 08:47 -0500, Anil Felipe Duggirala wrote:
> >
> >     My questions: 1. Is there another way to enable fractional
> >     scaling? (Gnome and Wayland) 
> >
> > In my opinion scaling is a bad hack to avoid properly sizing a GUI to 
> > the current screen resolution and dimensions, and produced no end of 
> > rendering side effects when I messed with it in the past. 
>  
>  Hello Tim.
>  I don't know what you mean by "end of rendering". 
"no end of"  means "very many" or "a lot of" :-)

>  
> > Have you tried simply setting appropriate font sizes? 
>  
>  That is what Ive done so far. I installed gnome-tweaks and set the font 
>  "scaling factor" to 1.20. And chose appropriate font size in apps like 
>  CLion.
>  I will continue to play with fonts to see if that works. My eyesight is 
>  not the best right now.
>  My screen is scaled at 200% at this point. Using no scaling would be 
>  impossible I think. This is a 4k resolution on a 15 inch screen.
>  
>  thank you,
>  
>  
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[Tim]

Tim:
> > In my opinion scaling is a bad hack to avoid properly sizing a
> GUI
> > to the current screen resolution and dimensions, and produced
> > no end of rendering side effects when I messed with it in the past. 
Anil Felipe Duggirala:
>  I don't know what you mean by "end of rendering".
"no end of rendering side effects" meaning endless problems.

Some things would scale, others would not (bits of the GUI, browsers
have their own independent rendering engines, word processors, too).

If I'm preparing a document, and want to see it in 1:1 screen rendering
so I can see how it'll print.  (There are display options in word
processors for 1:1, full width, full height, and other magnifications.)
I want an A4 page to display at real A4 size on the screen (if I hold a
piece of paper next to it, it ought to be nearly identical).  If I want
to draw a 4 cm by 8 cm rectangle, I want it to appear in those sizes. 
If I use 12 point text, it actually has to be 12 point text, not
something unpredictable.  Likewise, if I want to use 20 pixel text to
match alongside a 200 by 300 pixel image, I want them both to be using
the same pixel size.  Centimeters, pixels and points are absolute
sizes, *other* sizing schemes are to be used when you want to use
relative sizing.

Likewise when I'm printing something.  I've I've measured something I'm
going to print for, and want to produce a 12 by 10 cm box, with so-many 
lines of 14 point text, I want to edit and print it with those real
dimensions.  Not play random magnification print, adjust, and retry,
games.

I've always found that scaling fouled all of that up.  It seems no
programmer gets that.  They probably think 4 inches is huge.

In my opinion, when you set screen font sizes (e.g. the body text, the
window titles, etc), you should be able to set the size you actually
want.  And the GUIs should appropriately resize to fit.  It should work
that simply.  The clicky icons ought to be a similar size to your
screen font, etc.  Having a separate expansion factor to aid people who
want large or small icons is a good thing, too.  But base the GUI
relative to the size of the text you're reading.

They've simply gone about it the *wrong* way, in how they've changed
the old style of GUI to suit newer tiny, big, and high-resolution screens.
 
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[Theodore Papadopoulo]

On 5/14/22 04:03, Tim via users wrote:
>  On Fri, 2022-05-13 at 08:47 -0500, Anil Felipe Duggirala wrote:
> > My questions:
> > 1. Is there another way to enable fractional scaling? (Gnome and
> > Wayland)
>  In my opinion scaling is a bad hack to avoid properly sizing a GUI to
>  the current screen resolution and dimensions, and produced no end of
>  rendering side effects when I messed with it in the past.
>
>  Have you tried simply setting appropriate font sizes?
>     
Changing the font size is not usually an option until we can specify 
font sizes in some more natural unit than pixels (mm, inches, percentage 
of the screen, ....). The problem is that you cannot play with all font 
sizes each time you change the monitor. The problem is even worse when 
you combine monitors of different resolutions. So scaling maybe a hack 
but changing font sizes is an another one. I hope that one day we will 
have a better device independent way to fix sizes, the pixel is no 
longer - in most cases - the right unit for doing that...

But I guess there is a long way before reaching that !!!
A huge amount of software (starting with graphical toolboxes gtk or Qt) 
deeply rely on pixel counts.
Remember Display Postscript (DPE), they were ahead of their time on all 
these aspects...

      Theo.