OpenEdge GUI development tools on 4K laptop screens--yay or nay?

Keith G.

Member
I am looking at buying a new laptop, probably a ThinkPad variant with a 14-inch screen for the sake of portability. I am considering the 4K screen option. This new machine's primary purpose is OpenEdge development. We do not yet use PDSOE, but I do often use third-party editors. Before pulling the trigger I thought I should ask for opinions here about using the old OpenEdge GUI tools on a 4K laptop screen. Can the problems of old Windows applications on newer high-resolution screen be overcome to make it not annoying or even squint-inducing? I don't have to use those old dev tools all the time, but I do use them enough that I don't want to have application scaling problems make me regret the 4K screen purchase.
 

Cringer

ProgressTalk.com Moderator
Staff member
They work fine in my experience so long as you set the High DPI Scaling Override correctly.
 

Rob Fitzpatrick

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
I primarily use PDSOE for dev work, along with some VS Code and UltraEdit. I have a Dell laptop with 4K display, and a few other external displays, full HD and below. In Windows I set the main (laptop) display at 200% scaling and the others at 100%. I prefer 200% over the "recommended" 300% as it's a compromise between reasonable readability and increased screen real estate that works for me. I do development work on the external 24" displays as they are much larger than the 13.3" laptop display.

Pretty much every application I use scales properly, except for PDSOE (Eclipse), but there is a workaround for that. Instead of launching PDSOE with PSC's batch file, I just run Eclipse directly, and use Windows compatibility settings to override the default scaling for it and use "System (Enhanced)". That makes the text and UI elements size correctly on all displays.

Everything else from Progress (Procedure Editor, Data Dictionary, proenv, etc.) works fine on all of my displays.

I definitely don't regret opting for the 4K display. It's beautiful and works well. If you're doing day-to-day development work and you have the luxury of working in the same place every day (i.e. not hoteling) then I strongly recommend buying a nice large external display, or two. If that device has an Intel 11th-gen or better CPU and a Thunderbolt 4 port then it can drive two external 4K displays at 60 Hz, plus the internal display. I don't have that setup yet but that's my plan for later this year.

I have run my current setup in both Windows 10 and Windows 11. From this perspective, I found no difference between the two.
 

Rob Fitzpatrick

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
Overriding the standard scaling in an Eclipse shortcut:

1646102430004.png

Shortcut target: C:\Progress\OE12.4\oeide\eclipse\eclipse.exe -vm "%JAVA_HOME%\bin\javaw.exe"
 

Stefan

Well-Known Member
Pretty much every application I use scales properly, except for PDSOE (Eclipse), but there is a workaround for that. Instead of launching PDSOE with PSC's batch file, I just run Eclipse directly, and use Windows compatibility settings to override the default scaling for it and use "System (Enhanced)". That makes the text and UI elements size correctly on all displays.
What's the deal with this? I thought the whole goal of the silly bat launcher was to make scaling work, but it's doing the exact opposite?

Code:
@echo off

REM Set this value to false to disable overriding high DPI scaling
set enableHighDPI="true"

if enableHighDPI=="false" goto launchPDSOE

REM Check if the windows version is 10(including any service packs). For Windows 10 the high DPI scaling will be enabled for eclipse.exe 
ver | find /i "Version 10" > nul
if ERRORLEVEL = 1 goto launchPDSOE

REM Add regsitry entry to enable high DPI settings
REG ADD "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers" /v "c:\progress\oe12.2\oeide\eclipse\eclipse.exe" /t REG_SZ /d "~ HIGHDPIAWARE" /f > nul

:launchPDSOE
call "c:\progress\oe12.2\bin\java_env.bat"
start "Progress Developer Studio for OpenEdge" "c:\progress\oe12.2\oeide\eclipse\eclipse.exe" -vm "%JAVA_HOME%\bin\javaw.exe" %*
 

Rob Fitzpatrick

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
My workaround, courtesy of Mike Fechner, works well. The only inconvenience is that (a) you have to make this shortcut manually in the first place, and (b) it causes this cosmetic issue with the splash screen, which doesn't matter to me.
1646118505493.png

I did some research into Java settings to try to solve this, and found various issues filed in the Eclipse project's bug tracker, which have been closed. I don't know if this is PSC's issue or Eclipse's but whoever it is isn't trying hard enough. Without exception, every single piece of software I use scales correctly, without intervention, except Eclipse.
 

Cringer

ProgressTalk.com Moderator
Staff member
I had a few issues with some programs. IIRC Outlook was a problem for a while. But yes, Eclipse was the worst.
 

Stefan

Well-Known Member
Just one caveat which had me scratching my head for a while, the batch file also sets the DLC environment variable, which allowed me to use this when building with Ant / pct.
 
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