Wayland Protocols 1.31 Released With Fractional Scaling Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Wayland Protocols 1.31 Released With Fractional Scaling Support

Wayland Protocols 1.31 has been released and this collection of protocols is now headlined by the addition of fractional scaling support!..

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Wayland-Protocols-1.31

[Lbibass]

Woohoo! Finally.

[bple2137]

i'm currently completely fine with my 1080p 14' laptop, and I got used to it being at 100% even when working with larger screens. I don't see the need of replacing it anytime soon, because the 4 years old low power i7 it has is still exactly what I need for that machine. Anyway, I have hoped that the HiDPI screen would be possible for me for next upgrade in few years. For now it doesn't look very appealing to have HiDPI screen when it doesn't look quite right, especially with the fonts, or causes issues when plugging in more screens. THAT + rescaled Xwayland could potentially lead to a pretty decent experience in much shorter time than I anticipated, so looks like I won't have to go with 1080p screen with the next upgrade around 2025. Thankfully!

[bug77]

Woohoo! Finally.

We're not quite there yet. We have to see implementations and, most importantly, non-blurry results. I am really hoping the results will not look off with the Wayland party claiming "that's not our job" again. Fingers crossed.

[remenic]

Anyway, I have hoped that the HiDPI screen would be possible for me for next upgrade in few years. For now it doesn't look very appealing to have HiDPI screen when it doesn't look quite right, especially with the fonts

I haven't ventured into the world of HiDPI, but as long as you stick to something with twice the DPI as 'normal' you can just scale everything 2x and it would look fine, no?

But fractional scaling iss nice for people that bought a screen where 2x scaling results in elements being physically too big on the screen, and 1x too small.

[amxfonseca]

But fractional scaling iss nice for people that bought a screen where 2x scaling results in elements being physically too big on the screen, and 1x too small.

You don’t really have a choice. Apart from Apple’s screens, the only fairly high resolution screens you can find in the 27” segment are all 4K. Which works best with 1.5x scaling.

I don’t see this trend changing any time soon, since 4K seems like some kind of a cool marketing term. Maybe I just need to wait long enough until 8K becomes the new marketing term, so I can run the screen at 3x instead.

[aufkrawall]

What are the implications for XWayland? Non-blurry fractional scaling results possible for it too?

[schmidtbag]

I don’t see this trend changing any time soon, since 4K seems like some kind of a cool marketing term. Maybe I just need to wait long enough until 8K becomes the new marketing term, so I can run the screen at 3x instead.

It is a trend I'm personally not fond of, for laptops in particular. I think 4K on a 27" is acceptable depending on your seating position, though 1440p would be sufficient. When it comes to 4K on 14" laptops though, I see that as a lose-lose situation. Other than some niche cases, all it does is increase cost, decrease performance, and decrease battery life. That's assuming everything scales properly, which isn't always the case. Even if you run at 1080p, you're still using more battery life since the backlight needs to be brighter to compensate for the pixel density. I've recently used someone else's 17" laptop with a 1366x768 display and honestly... it's totally usable. Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer a higher pixel density than that, but I wouldn't see myself complaining about it for most things I do on a daily basis.
I just don't get why such high pixel densities are being pushed when, to me, the cons heavily outweigh the pros.

[MadCatX]

Any idea how the implementations may deal with fractional scaling to avoid blurry and jagged results? I was of the opinion that fractional scaling was omitted from the original specs exactly because fractional scaling of pixels is difficult to get right.

[mantide]

You don’t really have a choice. Apart from Apple’s screens, the only fairly high resolution screens you can find in the 27” segment are all 4K. Which works best with 1.5x scaling.

I don’t see this trend changing any time soon, since 4K seems like some kind of a cool marketing term. Maybe I just need to wait long enough until 8K becomes the new marketing term, so I can run the screen at 3x instead.

Disagree on the the preference issue. My personal preference is 200% 27inch@4k as the PPI is still too low for the eyes. Plus if you run a fractional scaling your mouse DPI is all over the place and you lose all your muscle memory. I play FPS games competitively so YMMV. I am really looking forward to a 5K 27inch @ 240hz. I don't know how I am going to handle the mouse DPI issue by then lol.