Incorrect size of objects on the Mac Retina 5K screen

[thomaso]

30 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Adobe Acrobat Pro (version X at least) allows the user the specify a percentage so that "Actual size" really shows objects at realistic physical sizes.

But in macOS also Acrobat seems not to get the ppi info from the system but has to be set by the user to show "Actual size" accordingly.

It's interesting that even the macOS Terminal command  "system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType"  does neither mention ppi nor physical dimensions (e.g. diagonal inch) of the connected monitors.

By the way, here is an online calculator for monitor's ppi: https://www.sven.de/dpi/

[lacerto]

(...)

[Fixx]

19 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

It is probably "practical" to just base measurements on a 72dpi scale and assume that one point is one pixel -

This assumption was the basis of early mac designs – I wonder did Steve, Steve and Ronald really intentionally design mac to be a graphic industry champion or was that 1 point = 1 pixel just a lucky pick. Of course these choices have lost their meaning long since as displays can have extremely high pixel densities.

[Thomas K.]

On 7/4/2020 at 6:06 PM, thomaso said:

How comes you got two different results? (while the first made you post here) What setup was different at first?

Not sure. I stumpled upon a post asking the same question than this one a few months ago. I knew from the past that it worked (actually the first app I ever worked with, where it works). for me so I retried it and noticed that it seems that Designer only seems to consider the PPI of the internal display and not the external. I think, but am not sure, I tried to start the app on the screen I intent to work on, following the idea, that the app might check ppi only once at start up and then not anymore. I think it didn't help.

Whats "special" about my setup is that I use an external GPU with the external display attached to it. So I think (also not sure) that each screen is rendered by a different GPU. But the setup was the same few months ago.

Edited July 6, 2020 by Thomas K.
forgot something

[thomaso]

> (actually the first app I ever worked with, where it works)

What about the macOS Preview.app? To me it shows the 100% document size accordingly and even updates it live when I move the window from one screen to the other. (note there is an app preference to make it work this way).

4 hours ago, Thomas K. said:

I think, but am not sure, I tried to start the app on the screen I intent to work on, following the idea, that the app might check ppi only once at start up and then not anymore. I think it didn't help.

How did you achieve to make Affinity start on the external screen? And did Affinity then open all windows on that screen, incl. the "Open..." dialog and new document windows, too?
Although we may in macOS decide which screen gets the main menu bar, I assume that mac hardware with an internal screen too often treats this as kind of a master.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

How did you achieve to make Affinity start on the external screen? And did Affinity then open all windows on that screen, incl. the "Open..." dialog and new document windows, too?

There are several macOS Spaces options that determine how this can be done ... & some of them do not work exactly the same way in different Mac OS versions.

[thomaso]

4 minutes ago, R C-R said:

There are several macOS Spaces options that determine how this can be done

Yes, with macOS Spaces we can define specific "Desktops" for various apps – but assign an app to a specific screen, in terms of monitor hardware (as this thread is about)?

[R C-R]

17 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Yes, with macOS Spaces we can define specific "Desktops" for various apps – but assign an app to a specific screen, in terms of monitor hardware (as this thread is about)?

From the step 2 options of the Assign apps to spaces section of the linked help topic:

Quote

• Desktop on Display [number]: The app opens in the current space on a specific display (if more than one display is available).

This option is available only if more than one display is currently connected & detected. It also has been known to cause problems that vary depending on different combinations of the OS version & the application(s) in use, how the displays are attached, the startup/turn on sequence, & maybe some other factor(s).

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

This option is available only if more than one display is currently connected & detected.

I don't get this option in the context menu, even though 2 monitors are in use.
I vaguely remember an option in the system settings, maybe this is mandatory here. I had it activated once, but experienced it causing disadvantages (I don't remember in detail).

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

known to cause problems

I understand. Because Affinity can't handle fullscreen mode failure-free yet, this option may have more reasons not to work.
Initially I just was wondering only because Thomas K. wrote "I think it didn't help" - he did not say "It didn't work". (Okay now, nevermind)