[badsectoracula]

If it is the most requested, then perhaps one of those requesting it should try to do it themselves? HiDPI support sounds like a high effort low reward task (according to this[0] HiDPI monitors practically do not exist in the wild and chances are none of the main developers have one), so unless someone who really wants it puts the effort themselves it may take a long time to appear.

Generally speaking unless there is a big company behind the scenes that pays the developers for an open source project, it doesn't matter how many people ask for something if the developers themselves aren't interested in working on it and your best bet is to do it the old fashioned way (yourself :-P).

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/screen-resolution-stats/desktop/w...

[atemerev]

Every Macbook after around 2015 is HiDPI. Windows Surface laptops, too. Hardly "practically do not exist in the wild". I love Smalltalk, but I am not qualified to rewrite the entire Pharo rendering layer, unfortunately.

Also, statscounter doesn't account for high resolution displays at all, grouping them all as "other". And these are around 20%.

[badsectoracula]

These are still very few compared to every other desktop available out there. I said they are rare, not that they do not exist.

If statscounter isn't up to your liking, then check:

https://www.screenresolution.org/ (typical desktop HiDPI resolutions like 3840x2160 are at ~0.1%)

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw... (gamers tend to have higher specs in their computers and 4K is a big trend in places like /r/buildapc and /r/pcgaming yet 4K is at just 1.51%)

https://www.statista.com/statistics/487487/leading-desktop-s... (only for UK and a couple years old but the likelihood of the statistics going dramatically up is very low)

Look, if all you work with is Macbooks and similar computers, it is very likely that your view is biased (pretty much like the people who wonder why others are making a fuss about Electron applications when they can run several of them without issues). According to this (1 year old):

https://www.cultofmac.com/618730/q1-2019-pc-market-apple-mac...

...Apple only had around 7% of the global market share of computer sales between big brands and not only that is very low but also it doesn't include local brands that assemble the computers themselves nor custom built computers (even though i do not believe this is a big number, considering the size of the custom built market that exists, it still is a significant number). And it is about all Mac sales, including the lower end iMac (that have a regular DPI monitor) and monitorless desktops like Mac Mini that can be connected to a regular DPI monitor.

HiDPI on desktop might be a mainstream thing in 10 years or so, but right now every single statistic available shows otherwise. On mobile is a different story though (which is why i tried to avoid any statistics page that focuses on mobile).

[atemerev]

The first link counts 4k displays with 2x scaling as 1920x1080. It doesn’t seem to differentiate for hidpi monitors. People who use 4k displays without UI scaling are rare indeed. Perhaps macs are “rare” (though 7% is hardly rare). HiDPI desktops are still rare indeed. But HiDPI laptops are pretty common these days.

When I first saw a hidpi display (on iPhone 4), this was a game changer for me. Since then, I don’t understand how it is even possible to settle for something with visible pixels. iPhone 4 was releases 10 years ago.

[owl57]

I'm curious if it is even more misleading. Does it count 3840x2160 with 2x scaling as "other" or "1920x1080"?

[mgamache]

Don't forget the Dell XPS line (which is popular with dev types). I am working on a three year old XPS 15 with HiDPI

[zamadatix]

How is a table of resolutions supposed to tell you anything about DPI? A 640x480 screen can be high DPI while a 3840x2160p screen standard DPI. Or the other way around. Or neither. Or both. It depends on both resolution AND physical size.

It'd also be interesting if they were even checking physical resolution or virtual (scaled) resolution.

[badsectoracula]

This is a table of desktop resolutions, while it is possible that someone might have connected a 2" 640x480 screen to their desktop, it is very safe to assume that only resolutions above 2560x1440 are HiDPI and anything else is just noise.

[zamadatix]

"Desktop" includes laptop at statcounter. 1080p is supposed to be 23".

And again if it's simply the resolution the browser reports it is post scale so a 2560x1440 laptop at 150% would show as 1920x1080 anyways. It's web stats, they only care about the size of the viewport.

[badsectoracula]

Yes, i'm also talking about laptops here, not just desktops.

If you can go by with 150% this isn't HiDPI (and on most laptops 150% for 1080p is too big anyway, at least on Windows, you want something around 125%). HiDPI is something that you need at least 200%, like Apple's 2560x1600 at 13" where anything less is unusable. Using 100% scaling on a laptop at 1080p is perfectly fine (this is my laptop configuration and how i use it).

Remember that "HiDPI" was the generic term that was used in place of Apple's trademarked "Retina" and what is i am talking about.

The entire discussion is about why HiDPI isn't supported and the answer is simply that few people need it (as shown by the stats i linked above and below) and fewer are in a position to implement it.

[zamadatix]

Anything above 100% is considered high DPI on Windows, including 125%. I.e. if the display DPI is not 100% and the app isn't DPI aware you will end up with a blurry mess since the OS will stretch the app for you via bitmap scaling by a factor of DPI / 100%. Apple is the only one that does integer factor only DPI for their hardware (100%, 200%, 300%...) and their entire current lineup is >100% now.