MuseScore unusable on Windows with large screen-elements
If MuseScore is used on Windows the display size is increased (because the user has poor eyesight), MuseScore becomes pretty much unusable.
The smaller problem:
Some text just gets abbreviated until you have to guess what it even means.
In the following image, this problem could be prevented by using a plus-icon for the button instead of some enormous text.
The bigger problem:
Most pop-ups grow too large, which results in the user being unable to click on the bottom buttons. Unless you know how to trick your PC, this makes it impossible to actually reach the "Okay"/"Next"-buttons.
Screenshots:
Comments
Notice the absence of the next/okay-buttons in the last four screenshots.
In reply to Notice the absence of the… by Mraco_o
Return should use the OK button, Esc, the Cancel button.
In reply to Return shopuld use the OK… by Jojo-Schmitz
Thank you for suggesting workarounds. However, I think this issue should be addressed within the actual code, instead of hoping that people with small screens or bad eyesight know what to do.
Then you increased it too much, or the screen is too small
For the palettes, you can drag the border to make wider:
![palette border.png]( "palette border.png")
MuseScore relies on the OS to tell it the screen resolution, but depending on the OS, the screen resolution, and how you have applied scaling, this information isn't always specified as expected. So you may need to override what the OS says. You can do this by adding "-D xxx" to the command line when starting MuseScore, where "xxx" is the actual effective resolution in DPI. On some systems it can be possible to get the desired effect through use of properties on the executable file. Like, on Windows, you can right-click the ".exe" file for MsueScore, Properties, and somewhere in the compatibility / high DPI settings, a setting like "System" or "System (enhanced)" might do the trick. Unfortunately, each system is different in how this is handled.
In reply to MuseScore relies on the OS… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you for suggesting workarounds. However, I think this issue should be addressed within the actual code, instead of hoping that people with small screens or bad eyesight know what to do.
In reply to Thank you for suggesting… by Mraco_o
It is addressed in the code - MuseScore automatically adjusts the display according to the reported screen resolution, and this works almost all the time, regardless of the size of your screen. it's only a very small minority systems where for whatever reason the OS isn't reporting that resolution correctly that this code doesn't work. Of that tiny minority of systems with problems, some have small screens, some have large screens, others perfectly average-sized screens - it has more to do with the resolution and the display drivers used than the size of the display. And of course, we have no way of know whether the info is reported correctly or not - we simply scale to what we are told the resolution is. So if we're given bad info, we'll produce bad results, unfortunately.
Now, it could be that someday OS's will get smarter about reporting resolution, and the libraries we use to read this information will similarly get smarter about interpreting it, and we might then have the opportunity to take advantage of those changes. but for now, unfortunately, there is nothing we can do when presented with incorrect information that we don't know is incorrect. Except, make it easier to override this, like in the Preferences dialog instead of needing to use other workarounds.
In reply to It is addressed in the code … by Marc Sabatella
Thank you for the explanation! The weird thing is, i used an above-average-sized Laptop (it's huge and way too heavy), running Windows 10. This makes me think that it's not the OS that's at fault.
Also, just to make sure we're not talking about different things: I didn't mean it is a problem that the elements don't get larger. What I meant was that the windows scale, but they don't take into account the fact that they shouldn't be higher than the screen itself.
In reply to Thank you for the… by Mraco_o
It's not anyone's "fault", it's just a fact of life that there is no good standard for how to treat different display resolutions, so each system handles it differently, and there is no guarantee that what one system reports is the same as what another will report even for the same physical display. For decades all software, including the operating system itself, simply assumed monitors would always and forever be 72-100 DPI. It's only in the past few years that this is changing, and software - including the operating systems - is slow to catch up. leading to glitches like this all over the place. As I related elsewhere, I have probably at least half a dozen different applications I use regularly that similarly display incorrectly by default - some on Windows, others on Linux. It's just how it is, until the world develops more universal standards for this.
Regarding your second point, I'm not sure I follow. The goal of the scaling is to make sure everything is literally the same physical size on the screen, regardless of your screen size. That is, the icons on the toolbar should be literally 0.5 inches tall or whatever they normally are, a Letter-sized score should be displayed literally at 8.5" wide when viewed at 100%, and text at 12pt should literally be twelve points high (1/6"). Now, if you subjectively happen to want to view your score smaller, then you change the View setting. If you subjectively happen to want smaller icons, then change their size in Edit / Preferences / General. And so on.
In reply to Thank you for the… by Mraco_o
The windows scaling implementation however is notoriously bad because it tries to be too smart about what it scales; it even breaks their own EDGE browser when used on an external display..
The point is that that window doesn't get higher from our point of view; We get told your screen is 900px high (for example) and ask windows to draw a window of 700 on it. However windows then "smart-scales" our request 700 up to 1050 if you have the windows scaling set to 150% outside of our knowledge
In reply to The windows scaling… by jeetee
> The point is that that window doesn't get higher from our point of view; We get told your screen is 900px high (for example) and ask windows to draw a window of 700 on it. However windows then "smart-scales" our request 700 up to 1050 if you have the windows scaling set to 150% outside of our knowledge
I didn't change any scaling inside of MuseScore, the only thing i did was change the windows-settings.
If i understand you correctly, MuseScore scales TWICE in my scenario. Why?
In reply to > The point is that that… by Mraco_o
MuseScore only sees your physical x*y pixels, not the logical scaling for those to 150%
So in the -D xxx commandline option you'd need to cater for that