[Usability] Possible to provide an option or a sugeestion in KScreen to (guide the user to) enable "PLASMA_USE_QT_SCALING"?

Fusion Future qydwhotmail at gmail.com
Thu Feb 10 06:03:52 GMT 2022


Currently, Plasma on X11 disables `PLASMA_USE_QT_SCALING` by default to 
avoid some more serious bugs (and many of them have been fixed [1]).

Bug 356446 [2] was marked "RESOLVED INTENTIONAL"  because "it breaks 
mixed-DPI screen arrangements" and there seems no way to overcome the 
defect because of design flaws in upstream X11 library (if I understand 
it correctly).

However, for any user who has only one screen or has multiple screens 
with the same DPI value, and has to use X11 for whatever reason, the 
visual experience becomes much worse after the user changes the global 
scale factor and finds Plasma Desktop (or plasmashell) doesn't scale 
correctly.

The problem can be alleviated by setting "PLASMA_USE_QT_SCALING=1" 
environment variable, but the user may not be aware of that variable 
when changing the scale factor and therefore leave a bad impression on 
Plasma Desktop.

==============================

I have some suggestions to help the user understand why the environment 
variable is not set by default:

1. Inform the user that Plasma Desktop will not obey the scale factor 
when changing the value in KScreen KCM, and the technical reason.

2. Show an inline message to guide the user to add 
"PLASMA_USE_QT_SCALING=1" in the environment variable list, and possible 
consequences of doing so.

3. If possible, KScreen can provide an option to directly enable it when 
the current session uses X11. [3]

(But where should the setting be saved? "~/.profile" or a config file 
like "startkderc"? The latter may require modifying 
"plasma-workspace/startkde/startplasma.cpp". I am not familiar with how 
the start process works so I just put some ideas here.)

I am not sure if my suggestions are applicable. Any ideas are welcome!

==============================

References:

[1] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356446 (See "Depends on")
[2] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356446#c70
[3] https://bugs.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=146517


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