Scaling fix for RTIViewer on high DPI displays (Windows 10)

[aricooperdavis]

I had a quick search for this on the forum and couldn't find any information about it, so I thought that I'd post it here to help out anyone who is trying to use RTIViewer on a high DPI display.
 

On some computers with High DPI displays the RTIViewer program doesn't scale up properly, leaving the buttons too small and the text no longer fits on them, as below:
 

 
To fix this we need to tell Windows 10 not to try and scale up the program intelligently, but to run it at its native resolution and magnify the whole thing. This may leave icons and text a little blurry, but it makes the program usable.
 
To do this we download the manifest file linked at the bottom of the page, then move this manifest file to the same place that you installed RTIViewer; usually C:/Program Files/RTIViewer by default.
 
Then we need to tell Windows to look for manifest files when opening programs. To do this we open regedit.exe by pressing the windows key, typing run, pressing Enter, typing regedit, and pressing enter. We then use regedit to find the registry subkey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > SideBySide in the left sidebar, then right-click in the main window and select New > DWORD (32 bit) Value.

 

 

Name this PreferExternalManifest then press enter, before right-clicking it and choosing Modify. Give it a decimal value of 1, then press Okay and close regedit.

 

Now when you restart or reopen RTIViewer it should obey system scaling.

 

 

 

[aricooperdavis]

It looks like the forum won't let me upload .manifest files so I've uploaded it to GitHub and you can download it from here: https://github.com/aricooperdavis/RTIViewerManifest/blob/master/RTIViewer.exe.manifest

[JoshE17]

Dear Ari,


Thanks very much for posting this. Can I just check that GitHub is still hosting the .manifest file? When I clicked your link I got the code, but not an actual .exe to run, forgive me for asking I'm not the most tech savvy of people, but I feel I may be missing something. 

Thanks again.

Best regards,

J

[cdschroer]

Thanks for posting this!  We recently got a 4K monitor we are using in a Windows environment, and ran into this issue (we are mostly a mac shop).  We hadn't tracked down the best way to deal with it yet - and this is very helpful.

 

Note that RTIBuilder (and some of our other tools like inspector and DLN: Capture Context) are written in C++ using the qt libraries for the UI.  I'm guessing this is an issue with the qt libraries not handling scaling for hi-res monitors. We are seeing this problem with all of our tools.

 

If you want to check out the Digital Lab Notebook (DLN) tools go here: http://culturalheritageimaging.org/What_We_Offer/Downloads/DLN/index.html

 

Carla

[Tony]

Hi Carla,

Has an easy fix been found for this issue yet?

Thank you,

Tony

[cdschroer]

Tony -  if you click on the tool/ configuration icon and click the button for "full size" that usually solves this particular problem.

 

Sorry, I've been away from the forum a lot this summer - we'll just chalk it up to 2020 and leave it at that.

Carla

[Tony]

On 8/29/2020 at 1:07 AM, cdschroer said:

Tony -  if you click on the tool/ configuration icon and click the button for "full size" that usually solves this particular problem.

 

Sorry, I've been away from the forum a lot this summer - we'll just chalk it up to 2020 and leave it at that.

Carla

Hi Carla,

Sadly I can only see this when I click the tool icon.... and it will not let me resize it whatever I do.

 

[Tony]

Thank you aricooperdavis

I finally got this to work following your instructions. Appreciated.