High DPI on Windows: Support for high resolution screens

At 4D, we take customer requests very seriously!

In previous meetings, customers showed great interest in supporting high-resolution displays, such as 4K displays, in Windows. Your wish has been fulfilled as we have added support for High DPI in 4D.

High DPI stands for High Dots Per Inch. It represents the pixel density; the higher the DPI, the higher the density of pixels. On 4K screens, the pixel density can be so high that displaying, as usual, would make all icons and controls extremely small. As such, Windows allows you to change the scale of text, icons, and controls. On 4K screens, it’s activated by default.

We first supported high DPI on Mac, and with v19R4, 4D is now fully compatible on Windows, too. The result is a better image quality, with a higher precision of pixels as shown in the image below:

Difference between a 4D launched without High DPI support (back)
and with High DPI support (front) when the scale is at 125%

There are still a few things you have to check for your applications to get the best display with High DPI:

• If you are working on a structure created with an older version of 4D, you should activate the compatibility option “Use DirectWrite for text rendering in forms” to get the best text rendering.
• Images and icons will be resized to fit the scale. You should check that you use SVG or high resolution pictures to avoid pixelated images.
• If you use plugins manipulating the UI, be sure that they are compatible with High DPI. Check with plugins developers if they have a compatible version.

We hope that this change will increase the visual quality of your applications. Please feel free to share any comments with us on the official 4D forum.