11.1 IDE woes with multiple monitors and different dpi.

[Damon 0]

I can't be the only one going crazy with these problems.  Laptop has a high resolution screen running 150% dpi, when at home office I use an external monitor as a second screen (extended desktop) at 100% dpi, when in the work office i'm just using the laptop.  At home i put the ide on the second monitor.  The ide does more wonky things than i can count.  

For example, it moves non-visual controls seemingly randomly which ones to places off screen.

Font size in the code window changes/doesn't match dpi of monitor, along with certain objects/fonts in the design time areas.

Some non-visual components are even lost at this point since they are so far off the screen i'm assuming.  I have to search for them in the object inspector.

On the multiple monitor front as well, why does the ide insist on always moving the debug application and itself back to monitor 1 every time you run?  Then on exit of the application the ide goes back to the monitor you had it on, but it's not the same size.  In fact it never remembers what size it was I don't think.  It's very annoying and over hours of coding and debugging it's honestly a huge waste of time constantly resizing windows.  10.4 was less buggy with this behavior but still always moved apps to monitor 1.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Damon

[Achim Kalwa 61]

Yes, even Delphi 11.1 has a lot of issues with changing display dpi. The only way to "solve" most of this problems is to run the IDE as "DPI unware" (there is an entry in the Windows start menu). But all fonts/icons/designer will be blurry on your 150 dpi display; just as Delphi 10.4 was.

[PeterBelow 238]

1 hour ago, Damon said:

On the multiple monitor front as well, why does the ide insist on always moving the debug application and itself back to monitor 1 every time you run?

The IDE uses separate layouts/desktops for editing and debugging. You have to adjust the debug layout to your requirements, save it under a name of your own, and then make that the default debug layout.

[ULIK 16]

Well, I'm not sure if anyone on Embarcadero has really tested the IDE running on a system with multiple monitors and different DPI scaling, especially, if the primary monitor has a different scaling then 96 DPI. There are so many problems (fonts do not scale or scale too large, IDE toolbars getting too large or moving their position, ...) 

It can be a hard job (I'm currently trying to make our own application to be per monitor aware and I'm still not finished after 4 weeks) but if they promote the IDE to be support High DPI, it should work at least a little bit better.

[dummzeuch 1505]

49 minutes ago, ULIK said:

Well, I'm not sure if anyone on Embarcadero has really tested the IDE running on a system with multiple monitors and different DPI scaling, especially, if the primary monitor has a different scaling then 96 DPI. There are so many problems (fonts do not scale or scale too large, IDE toolbars getting too large or moving their position, ...) 

I'm sure somebody did test with multiple monitors with different scaling (but still with 100 % scaling on the main monitor), because I filed several bug reports regarding this configuration and got feedback. They even fixed some of the bugs, which made Delphi 11.1 nearly but not quite usable for me. That's a shame because I would really like to have some crisp text display in the editor.

[ULIK 16]

Well, I hope, that next release will improve this ...

[Damon 0]

First, yes, i have saved a layout and am aware of the setting.  As a developer i've been struggling with high dpi for some number of years now with my own applications.  4k displays have been out a long time.  I have never made the ide "non dpi aware" as suggested and never had these problems.  It seems the dpi "additions" they have may in 11 vs 10.x have caused these issues.  I used the exact same setup and while the failure to stay on the source monitor was still a thing, these weird form changes and glitches were not present.

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

23 minutes ago, Damon said:

I have never made the ide "non dpi aware" as suggested and never had these problems.

The IDE has always been non DPI aware before version 11, so such a setting didn't even exist for versions below 11.

[Damon 0]

Here's another issue that seems to be only high dpi occuring.

 

[corneliusdavid 214]

3 hours ago, Damon said:

Here's another issue that seems to be only high dpi occuring.

Wow, that's really weird.  I've been using Delphi 11, DPI-Aware for a few months now and have several data modules and forms with non-visual controls and they have never been repositioned.

 

Do you have any IDE Experts installed?  Is this VCL or Firemonkey? 

[corneliusdavid 214]

I just encountered something somewhat related that may give a clue--and definitely ties in with DPI. In attempting to replicate your problem of non-visual components being repositioned, I opened up a data module in Delphi 11 and tried moving the components around and saving to see what would happen. Just now, I opened that data module up in Delphi 10.4 (after saving it in D11) and saw the components had been spaced out and the data module "form" itself was twice the size. I also noticed that D11 had added the PixelsPerInch property to the data module (which Delphi 10.4 had to strip out upon opening it).

 

The DPI-unaware version of Delphi 11 does not affect the placement or sizing of the data module or its components at all, nor does it add the PixlsPerInch property.

[corneliusdavid 214]

OK, one more interesting thing (I keep thinking of different ways to test this...): I was running D11 DPI-aware on my High-DPI monitor and it worked fine. When I right+clicked on the data module's editor tab and selected "New Edit Window" to open the data module in a separate (non-docked) window, then moved that window to a regular-DPI monitor, that's when I started having the same problems you described: moving components then saving, moved them back. If I re-docked the floating editor window back in Delphi, the problem stopped; if I moved the entire Delphi IDE to a regular-DPI monitor, the problem also stopped.

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

6 hours ago, corneliusdavid said:

I opened that data module up in Delphi 10.4 (after saving it in D11)

That is a scenario known not to work. Especially it is the driver behind RSP-35301 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Uwe Raabe

[Damon 0]

This is vcl.  The project was started in 10.x but i have not opened it backwards.  The pc is entirely new anyway.  Only 11 is installed on it.  So to follow up - the video i made yesterday showed the problem only on the laptop while at the office.  I am home this morning and open Delphi and it goes to my add on monitor (100% dpi) and it now behaves fine.  I moved the components and saved them and they stayed.

I am wondering if there is a problem between the saved desktop settings and the ide when a monitor is not there along with the dpi problems.  I unchecked the snap/scale grid with dpi setting and the ide is at least behaving better now when switching from maximized to windowed.  Maybe i need to setup another desktop and switch between them... but remembering to do that every day is unlikely.