Author Mode Formatting Oddity

[odeon]

Hi,

I'm using the DocBook 5 authoring environment to write a paper and encountered an authoring mode formatting oddity that is best described by this screenshot:



In other words, no matter what I do, the editable text area in Author mode remains very narrow, around a fourth of the available editor pane width.

My screen is a 4k HiDPI one and the OS is Ubuntu 15.10. Since Java apps including oXygen have problems with HiDPI scaling (I've set a factor 2 in the UI itself), I have doubled the font sizes in Preferences. Obviously, the icons are still tiny but all in all, oXygen is usable this way.

Windows 10 handles the oXygen UI well, scaling almost everything, and the narrow Author mode editable space is nowhere in evidence.

Am I right in thinking that this is an artefact of the HiDPI screen and the current problems HiDPI brings to the Java implementation in Linux? Is there something I can do to fix this?

And perhaps more importantly, please tell me that you have something planned to support those of us using Linux and modern hardware? Pretty please?

Thanks,

Ari Nordström

[odeon]

Sorry, but the image doesn't seem to display correctly when using the img bbcode tags (it could be me, of course, and if so, please let me know). Here is the link to the screenshot:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9G_0c ... sp=sharing

[Radu]

Hi Ari,

What version of Oxygen are you using?
On the Author toolbar there is a "Styles" drop down. You could try to check in it the "Full Width" layer.
By default Oxygen tries to squeeze the content in an US Letter width. We considered this to be easier for writing on very wide monitor. But even with this US Letter width default, the screenshot you sent looks like the entire page width is not fully used. If you scroll all the way down through your document, can you find an area where the entire width of the page is used? Are you using comment callouts somewhere in that content?

Regards,
Radu

[odeon]

Hi Radu,

Sorry, I should have included the oXygen version. It's 17.1 and the latest build. There is actually a <programlisting> that takes up the "page" width. Just noticed it now, it's just a single line and I was just too surprised to look carefully.

The Full width setting helped--thank you. For some reason I've never noticed that you use US Letter by default, but on the other hand, this is my first 4k screen and probably the first time I've used Author mode since getting it. Any chance 17.2 will help fix the scaling, or do we need to wait for Java 9?

Thank you for your help, and thank you for a great product, as always.

Best,

/Ari

[adrian]

Hi,

For Linux, in v17.1 there is available an experimental implementation of the HiDPI support. It's based on the HiDPI support that Oxygen implements for Windows, but it has not yet been properly tested on Linux. In theory it should perform the same as the Windows HiDPI support.
To enable it you need to edit the file oxygen17.1.vmoptions and on a new line add:

Code: Select all

-Dcom.oxygenxml.hidpi.scaling=2

2 (200%) is the best handled scaling
1.5 (150%) and 1.25 (125%) are decent, but may still need some work.

All feedback is welcome. Please report any issues you find with this support enabled.

Regards,
Adrian

[Radu]

Hi Ari,

Besides what Adrian said, about your remark:

For some reason I've never noticed that you use US Letter by default

Actually we started doing this in 17.1, the default CSS for editing Docbook tries to show a page-like layout instead of letting the content span the entire screen width.
In the CSS used for rendering the XML we define the US letter sizes specified in centimeters but because Oxygen does not yet detect high DPI automatically on Linux the computation of the width in pixels from the centimeters is done with a smaller DPI and ends up being quite narrow.

Regards,
Radu

[odeon]

Hi,

Re the US Letter width: thanks--I was wondering how I could have missed it, having written I don't know how many papers using oXygen through the last ten years, but it being introduced in 17.1 explains it.

I've edited the vmoptions file using scale factor 2, with varying results. In Ubuntu 15.10 (Unity), the Athor fonts and the icon scaling is fine, while menu texts, texts inside panes (ouline, project, attributes, etc) and dialogs are tiny and unworkable without scaling the GUI fonts in Preferences. Tiny remain also the pane controls (close, document arrows in the editor pane, etc), the coloured validation indicator next to the scrollbar, and things like that little clip symbol used next to links in DocBook.

Still, all in all, I now have an oXygen install I can work with, and one less reason to reboot to Windows.

I also tested it in the Cinnamon 2.8 desktop (I use it as an alternative to Unity in Ubuntu). The scaling seems to behave more or less similarly, except for one little difference: when hovering the mouse pointer over oXygen, the pointer shrinks to half size. I have desktop scaling set to a factor 2 in both desktops, but the shrinking pointer is only a problem in CInnamon, not in Unity.

Again, thank you.

Best,

/Ari

[ionela]

Hello,

Just to update the thread, HiPDI support has been improved in version 18.0 of oXygen.

You can download it from our web site:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/download.html

The complete what's new list is available here:
https://www.oxygenxml.com/whatisnew18.0.html

Let us know if you encounter further issues with this new version.

Regards,
Ionela