Anybody tried Scrivener with an Ultra HD (4K) monitor

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
5

I’m evaluating Scrivener at the moment and like one of the earlier posters, I’m running on a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro. Yeah, it’s 3200x1800 on a 13.3" screen, so it’s very high DPI. I agree that it’s usable and that it’s not as bad as some software, but it’s not pleasant and some dialog boxes are a bit of a mess. Having owned this laptop (which is superb btw!), for 6 months, I’m somewhat used to seeing software that doesn’t support high-DPI, but over the months, various products have been updated to deal with it. Dropbox used to be terrible, but now it’s great.

I’ve attached a screenshot so you can see part of the problem.
[screenshot removed because it was sending this page loopy!]

Is there any plans to update Scrivener to support high-DPI? I suspect this ‘problem’ is only likely to become more commonplace.

6

As noted above:

I was able to get a better look than what you posted, it involved scaling the graphics somehow as well. They were a bit blurry, but everything fit together correctly. Maybe try playing with a few other settings in Control Panel.

7

Ah, sorry, somehow I missed the bit about the plans. Hopefully this will come sooner than later! Beyond Compare is another program that thankfully has recently addressed this problem.

8

I am also using the Lenovo Yoga 2. While Scrivener is “usable” with the higher resolution display, I am trying to learn to fully utilize this awesome software and finding that the display is killing my ability to use certain features.

For example, the meta data box is completely screwed up. See screenshot (which I downsized by half so hopefully it won’t appear too terribly large here).

I cannot utilize the meta data checkboxes and the labels are VERY difficult to read. If I didn’t still have a desktop machine with which to do certain tasks, I would find Scrivener’s usefulness cut significantly by its inability to display on my laptop.

The worst part is that I cannot seem to simply “change my display resolution” and fix the problem. Why, oh, why doesn’t Scrivener look better when I change my Lenovo to a lower screen res? Anybody have some technical insights on that one?

Would truly love to have some technical genius figure out a workaround. I’ve gone so far as to investigate virtual machine emulators and such, just in case I could somehow run a normal, low-res Windows machine in a VM and use Scrivener inside of that. But I didn’t find anything that worked for me (which could be due to my ignorance of the subject… I know just enough to get myself into trouble sometimes).

scriv-high-res.png
scriv-high-res.png1600×900 249 KB

9

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to add my voice and respectfully request that Literature and Latte supports high-DPI in Scrivener. I was first exposed to this software on a 11 in MacBook Air, but now I have a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro on which I’d really love to write. Such support doesn’t seem to be an easy task, so all I can do is cheer for the developers and wait for it. I really like Scrivener and I think it would shine to its full potential with the added real estate of a high resolution screen.

THANX

10

Well, I finally took the plunge and bought an ASUS PB278Q (which I’m generally happy with). In addition to the other problems highlighted in the posts above, the text in my main document doesn’t fill the central working area in Scrivener; I have acres of wasted space to the right of my text (see screenshot). I feel like there should be some simple fix to this, but I can’t figure it out. Any suggestions would be very welcome (and, of course, I too would love to see very high DPI displays fully supported in future versions). Thanks, Jim

screenshot.jpg
screenshot.jpg1600×870 524 KB

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It looks like you have a right-indent set. If you toggle on Format > Show Ruler, you can select all the text in the document and then drag the marker on the right all the way off the right edge. It should attach itself to the edge of the ruler then so that the text will wrap to the width of the editor (equivalent to wrapping at the right margin).

12

After many experiments, I have sadly had to conclude that Scrivener is unusable on a high-res monitor. For proof, see the attached screen shot. On my screen the cards on the corkboard are almost too small to read. If I click on the options icon (almost too small to see in the bottom right hand corner), I get what you see in the image: the dialog box is unusable because it can’t be resized so I can’t see (much less adjust) the options for the corkboard. This kind of thing happens repeatedly throughout the program. So, for now (unfortunately), I’ve had to retire Scrivener in hopes of a new version fixing these problems eventually.
Scrivener problem 2.png

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Until the developers resolve all issues with high resolution displays there is a workaround to force windows to scale the application. The result may look blurry depending on the display and the Windows settings but at least it is usable.

This applies to all applications that misbehave in this manner. Example instructions to follow:
danantonielli.com/adobe-app- … plays-fix/

Since this is actually a property in the application, the developers could consider releasing a version of the application that includes this manifest change (‘DPI-Awareness’ set to no) until they have been able to reproduce and fix all issues.

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I tried a 4k monitor, but to get the benefit of extra screen real estate, I ended up sitting it somewhere between 18" and 2 feet from my face. Not a comfortable way to work (and I think I was getting a tan from it) so I took it back.

I didn’t try to scale within Scrivener; I just scaled the OS (Windows) to 125%. Any higher than that and I wouldn’t be gaining enough extra real estate to make it worthwhile.

I think if a 4k was 50" or larger it might be better because then I could get it back a few feet. I’d probably have to change my glasses, though. :smiley:

15

Rontarrant is exactly right. If we have a screen that’s twice as many screen pixels wide and twice as many pixels high – compared to a standard “HD” monitor – then if the pixels are going to LOOK the same size, the panel will have to be physically twice as wide and twice as high.

(FYI, for those new to all this, UHD (3840x2160) is exactly twice as many pixels wide and twice as many high, as full HD (1920x1080).)

If we’re planning on using this UHD panel at the same viewing distance, then we will want the pixels to be about the same size as what we’re used to. That has to mean a panel that’s 4x the size of HD, or typically about 42 inches wide. That’s a TV diagonal of 48 inches.

If we want to sit farther back, then the pixels themselves have to be BIGGER.

For example, for a panel at 30 inches viewing distance to look the same (i.e., to be equally readable, assuming we can focus at this distance) as HD at 24 inches, it would have to be roughly 55 inches diagonal. This sounds pretty cool – more room for keyboard, nice big screen – but when we actually put a 55" TV on the desk, 30" from our keyboard, it’s gigantic. Half of our extra real estate is UP, and it’s probably not quite as much fun to use as we’d like.

What most people are doing is getting UHD on a much smaller scale, and the tragic truth of this is that although the picture is sharper (if we stay 24" back from it), we can’t USE all the extra pixels the way we’d like. To do that, somebody has to design a completely different set of proportions for all the GUI elements – text, menus, icons, borders, pretty much everything. And that’s not something that can be done with some settings. (We can lower the effective resolution of the panel, or ask the OS to double all the pixels, but then we’re just simulating a non-UHD display and wasting our money.)

Allen

16

Yup. Something like this (see link) would make more sense, a curved screen 3440x1440.

bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/del … 912081en02

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Would just like to add my QQ. Scrivener is unusable for me at high resolution. :confused:

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PKoster (above) posted a link to a blog post by Dan Antonielli that explained how to fix this problem with Adobe apps. (Here’s the link http://www.danantonielli.com/adobe-app-scaling-on-high-dpi-displays-fix/)

I finally got around to trying this with Scrivener and it works a treat! :smiley:

If you would like to try, follow the instructions on Dan’s post. I attach my Scrivener manifest file, but it’s only a renamed copy of one of Dan’s; it doesn’t need to be customised for Scrivener in any way.

Two final points: I find this works best if you set Scrivener’s Windows Compatibility Properties (right-click on the Scrivener icon in the start menu and choose the “Compatibility” tab) to allow “display scaling on high DPI displays” (i.e. untick the box that disables this if necessary). Also, you can use the Font options in Scrivener (Under “Tools | Options | Appearance | Fonts”) to make various default font sizes bigger, so that you can make them readable when sitting a comfortable distance from the screen.

19

Just wanted to mention that I recently acquired one of these lovely monitors, and while it’s not a 4K monitor the scaling issue can make it a challenge. However, following the directions linked to by jje and PKoster, it seems to fix some of them.

Note: all screenshots were taken at of Scrivener full screen at UWHQ resolution (3440x1440), but to get the pictures uploaded I had to resize them 66.7% to get the files under the size limit. They are still useful to compare against each other.

Here’s the baseline Scrivener with 100% scaling, without the manifest fix; many folks may find this text to be a bit too small for comfort:

Scrivener-UWHQ-100scaling-nomanifest.jpg
Scrivener-UWHQ-100scaling-nomanifest.jpg2294×940 766 KB

100% with the manifest fix shows no difference, as expected.

Now at 125% scaling in Windows, without the manifest fix:

Scrivener-UWHQ-125scaling-nomanifest.jpg
Scrivener-UWHQ-125scaling-nomanifest.jpg2294×935 749 KB

And finally, at 125% scaling with the manifest fix:

Scrivener-UWHQ-125scaling-withmanifest.jpg
Scrivener-UWHQ-125scaling-withmanifest.jpg2294×936 630 KB

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Thank You! My old eyes can see again.

Jon Stonecash

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I had this issue on my XPS 13, the manifest fix worked PERFECTLY :laughing:

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[size=150]Windows 10
[/size]
just a small update to my previous post. I recently upgraded to Windows 10, which (naturally) recreated the registry so the fix stopped working. However, repeating the registry edit described in the previous post fixed the problem again (the old manifest file was still there, and the fix works under Windows 10).

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I discuss my positive experience in doing this on a 4K 50 inch big screen TV here…
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=32268

To be clear, my focus was on getting the equivalent of 4 HD monitors ganged together in a 2x2 stack, as opposed to ultra-smooth text. Basically, same dot pitch/dots per inch/text size as on 25 inch HD monitor, but with 4 times as much material on screen. Basically, a really big “desktop”.

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Actually, on Windows 10 there’s a simple setting which may ease the pain with these highest resolution monitors, without any registry changes or manifest files.

  • open Settings near the bottom of your Start menu
  • click System, upper left of the buttons
  • You’ll find Display – Customize Your Display already selected
  • Adjust the top slider, Change the size of text, apps, etc… You can choose 100%, 125%, or 150% to suit your display - 100% is recommended for normal size screens as it says, for those of us not needing this.
  • When you click Apply, your Scrivener window will immediately show the difference, so you can see which sizing suits you best.
  • It’s easy to reset this scaling if you don’t want it on another program. You can access it also from right-click on the Desktop, choosing Display Settings, which will bring you directly to the screen with the slider.

Noted also:

  • This will also change the sizing of most other programs, including the Adobe suites at CS6 at least. As the alert after the Apply says, you may need also to log out and in to see changes, but not for these.
  • if you want to change only Scrivener’s sizing, then you need the registry and manifest file, applied with due care – see the later notes off the originators website comments trying to help people.
  • in those comments, it was also suggested to use a Windows enviromental variable, UI_SCALE_FACTOR. However, as best I can determine, this works only for certain (2014) Adobe CC (subscription) software.