Retina Display Support For Mac

Since the launch of the MacBook Pro with Retina display in June, Microsoft had announced full compatibility of Office for Mac 2011 with Mountain Lion, but had neither confirmed, nor denied the possibility of a future update to the suite to fully support the Retina display. Up until now, Outlook 2011 was the only app that had support for the Retina display.

Well today, Microsoft has released an update to Office for Mac 2011 (14.2.4) that finally adds support for the Retina display across the suite. Owners of the rMBP can now enjoy a crisp UI and sharp text and finally get back to being productive on their notebooks. In addition, the update features several bug fixes and improvements for Outlook 2011 as well. Update: I just installed the update on my rMBP, and while the basic UI and text looks crisp, there are still several UI elements (such as previews), icons and images that have not been upscaled. But overall, this is still an order of magnitude improvement over the non-Retina version and finally makes Office for Mac 2011 usable on an rMBP. The Office for Mac 2011 14.2.4 update should now be available via Microsoft AutoUpdate, or you can manually download it from. Thursday, September 20, 2012 - I would assume that Office, like Firefox, used a dedicated text-rendering engine rather than the OS default.

If the app uses the OSX default text rendering engine, the transition should be seamless, but third party rendering might not be. The three months of turnaround was probably to rewrite the engine (or redirect office to use the default one).

Not too long a wait, at least compared to Adobe dragging its feet for years everytime there's an architectural change from Apple (Carbon to Cocoa, PPC to Intel, standard to Retina, etc). Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - Thing is, 95% of screens are low-res enough that the individual pixels are visible. So if you use vector graphics, they look like crap because of aliasing. You can try to align the lines to fit on the grid properly, but then you lose the seamless downscaling since everything looks subtly different depending on resolution.

If you've ever looked at Mac OS X font rendering and wondered why it's so blurry, blame Apple's obsession with keeping the vectors pure. Microsoft made something easier on the eyes with ClearType by forcing the fonts to align with the pixel grid ('hinting'). Apple's setup is OK on the retina screens though.

. Flags: danielmegert: review+ bsd: review+ Attachments (202.68 KB, image/png), Igor Vaynberg no flags (2.93 KB, patch), Tristan Hume no flags (101.04 KB, image/png), Neil Bartlett no flags (14.57 KB, image/png), Dmitry Gusev no flags (561.85 KB, image/png), Dario Luparello no flags (235.37 KB, image/png), Jigar Shah no flags (1.19 MB, application/zip), Markus Keller no flags (27.75 KB, image/png), Matthias Becker no flags (280.90 KB, image/png), Neil Bartlett no flags (46.44 KB, image/png), Solomon Ritzow no flags (proposed patch, testcase, etc.).

Stephen Cooper 2012-06-21 00:20:20 EDT According to 'High Resolution Guidelines for OS X', the fact that it's checked and dimmed means Eclipse isn't a cocoa app. This doesn't make sense. Here's the quote from 'Apps that aren’t Cocoa apps have this checkbox selected and unavailable (dimmed).

Mac Retina Display Resolution

' I will say that as a workaround, the user can go into Displays setting and instead of the default 'Best for Retina Displays' choose the 'Scaled - more space' option. While it does introduce eye-strain, it does make Eclipse look better. People with seriously good vision can download an app from and set the resolution to 2880 x 1800. Then Eclipse looks just as sharp as any other app. Unfortunately my vision isn't that good anymore. Stephen Cooper 2012-06-26 19:35:49 EDT Nope - I take that back. I had switched my screen resolution away from 'best for retina display' to 'more space' (I.wish.

they would specify pixel dimensions!) Doing that essentially levels the playing field between high-res applications and normal applications. When I switched back to 'best for retina' then the Juno RC3 still has the same font issues.:( And get info has the 'Open in Low Resolution' checkbox checked and dimmed. The same fix for Indigo fixes it for Juno too.

Silenio Quarti 2012-11-07 15:45:19 EST (In reply to ) Silenio Quarti and I fixed the bug with fonts that blocked this. My patch to the Info.plist can now be committed to fix this bug. The problem is the patch is against rt.equinox.binaries and this bug is in SWT so the relevant committers will not be notified. Does anyone know an equinox committer that could commit this? I can commit the patch this:-). But first, there are still a number of open bugs that only happen on retina displays (just search for retina). Do any of those bugs are bad enough that we should fix before adding NSHighResolutionCapable to the Info.plist?

Tristan Hume 2012-11-08 14:25:51 EST I think the following bugs should maybe be fixed/investigated before enabling retina mode: -I will check if I can reproduce this. I'm not sure this is retina related.This one is interesting. I don't notice it in the IDE but it might be a problem.This is only a problem if it occurs only with the retina plist switch on.

I have posted a comment asking. The retina switch only impacts the IDE so it shouldn't affect bugs for other SWT apps. Many of the retina bugs are problems that involve blurriness which occur whether retina is enabled or not. Enabling retina does not affect these bugs. Once these bugs are resolved or deemed unimportant then I think we can enable retina mode. Tristan Hume 2012-11-10 19:49:14 EST I recommend adding new bugs with retina in the bug name. I think this bug pertains specifically to enabling the retina plist switch.

If the effect of the other bug is worse with the switch turned on then it is relevant to this bug. Other things that are blurry even with the switch on should not be part of this bug since without the switch everything is blurry. Does this sound like a good plan? Have you created a bug/is there a bug for the line numbers being blurry? If not, you should definitely create one. Contributors with retina MacBooks can search for 'retina' to find them. I'm definitely interested in getting Eclipse to work with retina MacBooks but since the one week when I was working at home I have mostly been working on a linux computer so I probably won't be much help fixing further bugs.

Saurabh agarwal 2012-12-07 10:34:53 EST Since the icons continue to be shown as blurred, I have been trying to change the icons (with default size of 16x16) in Workbench toolbar to 32x32 customized icons. But the toolbar scaled up the icon provided by me and its showing it as a bigger icon. Since the same icon show nicely using a photo viewer, I think the size-increase is happening from eclipse side.

If so, how can I stop this scaling up of icons? Or When can we expect suitable icons for Mac retina display? Wolfgang Schell 2012-12-08 04:04:10 EST (In reply to ) Since the icons continue to be shown as blurred, I have been trying to change the icons (with default size of 16x16) in Workbench toolbar to 32x32 customized icons. But the toolbar scaled up the icon provided by me and its showing it as a bigger icon. Did you try to simply add the scaled icons with a name of as specified in the OS X Human Interface Guidelines 1? This might just do the trick, if Eclipse simply passes the filename of the icon to the OS for displaying.

1 section 'Provide the Correct Resources and Let OS X Do the Work' in. Saurabh agarwal 2012-12-10 01:42:21 EST (In reply to ) Also see here 1 for the document 'Testing and Troubleshooting High-Resolution Content' provided by apple. It details, e.g. How to set a standard display to show high resolution content and gives some hints for the @2x icons. 1 Conceptual/HighResolutionOSX/Testing/Testing.html#//appleref/doc/uid/ TP40012302-CH6-SW1 Thanks for your response. Well I tried with the following images: (a 32x32 image) But there was no difference, it continued to be shown as a large image with 32x32 dimensions instead of 16x16 dimensions with high resolution.

Seems like the NSImage object performs the necessary scaling as mentioned in the following link: I am not sure if eclispe internally uses NSImage for image display. Markus Keller 2015-05-05 13:27:23 EDT I don't think it's realistic to schedule this for Mars. Describes the fundamental problems with the current SWT APIs (short version: SWT APIs should shield clients from platform differences, but here, they just pass them on 1:1).

Contains fragments that add @1.5x and @2x versions of those icons that have already been converted to SVG. Shows how it looks like on Windows. On the Mac, it's not as bad, but the mix of low- and high-resolution icons also looks strange. And even if all icons were converted, we still have issues with images that are drawn in code: - view menu drop-down button - icons with overlays (e.g. Problems view, and all Java element icons) - line number ruler. Sravan Kumar Lakkimsetti 2015-05-06 05:29:02 EDT (In reply to Markus Keller from ) I don't think it's realistic to schedule this for Mars. describes the fundamental problems with the current SWT APIs (short version: SWT APIs should shield clients from platform differences, but here, they just pass them on 1:1).

I do not think there is a problem with SWT api. The main difference you are pointing here is automatic zooming of images (like Cocoa) in windows and Linux. We have already raised a for this purpose, and we are will handle it in the next release as an enhancement. Dario Luparello 2015-09-22 19:16:41 EDT Created Screenshot of Neon M2 on Windows 10, High DPI Laptop Testing Neon M2 on a brand new Dell XPS 13 (2015 version), Windows 10 Pro, 3200x1800 resolution, Display Settings with 'Change the size of text' at the default recommended value of 250%. The overall visual quality is abysmal.

Look at: - The size of the icons in all the toolbars - The size of the text in the left side and folder pane of the dialog box - The size of the text in the Welcome pane Eclipse is basically unusable. For the record, Mars behaves the same. OTHER SCALING ISSUES I NOTICED: - The splash screen is minuscule. Thomas Singer 2015-11-08 05:11:16 EST (In reply to Janek Smith from ) I see the problem unresolved for almost 5 years now. I do not think screen producers will be lowering screen resolutions any time soon. Do you have plan to fix this? Janek, could you please try the latest SmartGit 7.1 preview: If that works, Eclipse also could support it with the current API.

The most important problem seems that OS X handles hi-dpi screen support different (IMHO easier to implement) than Windows (don't know about different Linux window managers yet). Thomas Singer 2015-11-09 02:48:54 EST For OS X supporting the HiDPI-resolutions seems very simple: just create the images used for toolbars or which are drawn on the user interface with the ImageDataProvider constructor, load the actual images not as Image but as ImageData and return them in the ImageDataProvider.

Unfortunately, some methods like deriving disabled images from ImageDataProvider-images does not yet work. Setting, e.g., a toolbar button such an image will automatically draw the HiDPI variant if required. The same when using GC.draw(image, x, y). Otherwise one actually does not need to care. For Windows it is different: we load 'normal' images, either the 100% or 200% zoom variants, depending on the DPI information (SmartGit does not support other scaling factors yet). The problematic thing is that every pixel-related size has to be scaled (e.g.

Distances between controls, preferred sizes of controls, default table column widths.), but only if it is not based on calculated values from other sizes. Because of lack of an public API we currently use the Display's dpi / 96. Unfortunately, this does not work well when a) changing the display's dpi when the application is running, b) if different monitors have different dpi values. My conclusion: Apple has made it much simpler for application developers to implement HiDPI-support.

Sravan Kumar Lakkimsetti 2015-11-09 04:18:20 EST (In reply to Thomas Singer from ) I forgot: there are some consequences out of the different behaviors on OS X and Windows directly painting: painting a 1-pixel line on Windows produces a very thin line, on OS X this results actually in a 2-pixel line. The HiDPI mode on OS X is very good hidden for the application - it just gets the smaller screen resolution reported, the display's dpi values remain the same. Hi, This exactly what we are fixing as a part of. The current api will scale up any drawing call after the fix and there will be new set of apis if you want to a draw according to the absolute pixels. Please refer 479614 also. Torkild Resheim 2016-01-15 03:25:37 EST (In reply to Karthik Karuppannan from ) holy crap!!

This bug was submitted 3.5 years ago and still not fixed? This makes Eclipse totally unusable in any higher resolution, small screen laptop. Should I return my brand new shiny laptop? May be I should try IntelliJ then. As you should know, Eclipse is an open source project and as such often moves a bit slowly in areas where no-one is funding development or where there is no pressure. In this case the pressure is quite low. Despite of what you think; Eclipse works just fine on high DPI displays.

I've been using it on my retina-Mac(s) for years with only minor issues. Some of which this report adresses. So feel free to make Eclipse better by helping out on fixing them. A well formulated bug report is also of high value if you're not inclined to do any programming. Matthias Becker 2016-04-26 02:54:57 EDT (In reply to Markus Keller from ) Quite a few bigger changes to SWT went into M6 (mostly to shield SWT API clients from HiDPI differences on GTK and Win32).

Adoption work (e.g. support for HiDPI icons) will take place in M7. What does 'adoption' mean in this context? Does it mean that the various plugins have to provide PNGs in different resolutions (as described in ) or is there still 'fundamental' work to be done in the platform to enable plugins to contribute icons in multiple resolutions? With the Neon M6 the auto-scaling of SWT does mess up the icons on windows (with 150% Zoom level).

See for details. Do you have a plan 'B' if you cannot complete the adoption work (this bug was moved to RC1)? Will you then switch off the SWT auto-scaling?

Thomas Singer 2016-05-12 14:23:11 EDT (In reply to Marc-Andre Laperle from ) What do other projects have to do to support HDPI properly? Is there some documentation somewhere? In the migration guide perhaps? Do we have to provide icons of different sizes and adjust other code? +1 We have resolved a couple of HiDPI issues by trial and error ourselves (e.g. With platform-specific code for handling images), but in the mean-time the API has been improved. I'm not sure we are using the API as designed.

It would be very useful to have a guide which shows every aspect of the HiDPI-aware programming with SWT. It's time for a new issue? Markus Keller 2016-05-18 11:38:24 EDT (In reply to Eclipse Genie from ) New Gerrit change created: This enables support for images for clients of org.eclipse.jface.resource.ImageDescriptor#createFromURL(URL). Gerrits with the actual @2x icons will follow for each repo. For Neon, SWT will only support integer scale factors out of the box, see.

Unfortunately, we still have a few projects in the Eclipse SDK for which no SVG icons are available, so those will still use the 16x16 GIFs at this time: org.eclipse.jface.text org.eclipse.search org.eclipse.ui.editors. Markus Keller 2016-05-18 15:43:33 EDT Created Gerrits to push the icons into their respective bundles. Here are the irregularities I encountered while verifying the commits: Reopened, which broke org.eclipse.pde.ua.ui. Filed for wrong GIFs in org.eclipse.ui.console. Filed for wrong icon locations in JFace: org.eclipse.jface.action.images org.eclipse.jface.fieldassist.images org.eclipse.jface.wizard.images In eclipse.platform.ui, there were a few bundles that didn't contain any d. folders for disabled icons.

I've removed the @2x versions there as well. Matthias Becker 2016-06-03 08:33:23 EDT Today I tested the newest stuff from And compared it with an Eclipse Neon Version that already did the scaling but did not have the @2x-PNGs.

In this version the icons are scaled up and very blurry. With the version that includes the @2x-PNGs the icons are sharp but they are smaller (looks like the state before the up-scaling was activated). You can see this in the 'Eclipse Neon M7 and newest RC' attachment. What's wrong here? Do do I misunderstand something. Markus Keller 2016-06-03 11:12:01 EDT is the main N&N entry about HiDPI support, and it contains links to other entries. Explains that auto-scaling of SWT coordinates and images now only happens in steps of 100% by default.

See for more information about this change in RC1. 'Eclipse Neon M7 and newest RC' looks like the system is set to a 150% scaling factor, which uses 100% icons in the Neon release. You can set the vm argument '-Dswt.autoScale=quarter' to get the 4.6M6 behavior back, but the icons won't look good. Unfortunately, we currently don't have a way to properly interpolate icons with transparency on Windows. See for planned improvements in Oxygen (4.7). Brian de Alwis 2016-11-24 08:53:54 EST The HiDPI support is only in 4.6 (Neon) and above; it isn't in 3.8. You need to create pixel-doubled versions of your images and place them alongside your normal images with a `@2x` prefixed to the extension.

Retina Display Support For Macbook Pro

So if you have a 16x16 image in `icons/ovhdr.png` then you should create a 32x32 image in `icons/`. There is no support for SVG images, though you can use them as the source for a SVG - PNG conversion. The Eclipse Platform uses such a rendering pipeline for generating the Eclipse images, which you can see at.