[julik]

I would have switched in a pinch if Zed had their low-DPI font rendering in order. At the moment it just looks bad.

[veidr]

This is interesting to me, because I see this kind of comment on almost every Zed post.

I haven't used a low-DPI monitor for like... not sure, but more than a decade, I'm pretty sure, so for me the weird blocker I have with Zed is the "OMG YOU HAVE NO GPU!!!! THIS WILL NOT END WELL!" warning (I run a lot of Incus containers via RDP, and they mostly have no GPU available).

But what kind of monitors are you low-DPI people using? Some kind of classic Sony Trinitron CRTs, or what? I'm actually curious. Or is it not the display itself, but some kind of OS thing?

[Octoth0rpe]

Depending on the definition I'm not a low DPI user myself, but in my friend group, I seem to be the only person who cares about >160 dpi, lots of people are using 1440p displays, or >34" 4k displays. In Apple's mind, high dpi (eg retina) is > 218 dpi, so my lowly 34" 5120x2160 doesn't count for them. But it is > 160 which is my personal threshold for hi dpi.

There aren't all that many >20" displays on the market that meet Apple's definition of high dpi, and not a ton more that meet my much looser definition.

[burlesona]

I have a 4-5 year old ultra wide monitor which is a lot of pixels but low dpi. I really like the single monitor containing two screens worth of pixels, but I wish it was high dpi. At the time there weren’t really high dpi ultra wides available, and they’re still expensive enough that upgrading isn’t a high priority for me… but I’m sure I will at some point.

[julik]

Mine is 2560x1440 which is a pretty nice "sweet spot" size. A comparable 5k to 6k display still commands a substantial price, and - given that I work at two locations - would need me to have two of them. The screen I use as my current (a 3x2 BenQ) also has some amount of subsampling going on, because running it at 2x ("Retina native HiDPI") all the UI controls are too damn big, and space is not enough. Running it at 1x (everything teeeny-tiny) is just not very good for my eyesight and not very workable - and, again, with Zed bumps into the same broken antialiasing rasterizer they have.

And it is not an OS thing. The OS renders subpixel antialiased fonts just fine. But Zed uses its own font rasterizer, and it completely falters when faced with a "standard passable resolution" screen - the letters become mushy, as if they have been blurred - and rather sloppily at that.

[landtuna]

I actually don't understand what I'm missing. I'm using two old monitors, a 27" at 2560x1440 and a 23.5" at 1920x1080 (in addition to my high DPI Framework 13 screen). How else can I get at least 4480 across (after scaling to a font size I can read - I'm 49) and still cover that many inches? My DPI right now is about 100, so to double that, wouldn't I need 8960 across 44 inches? I don't really want to pay $1500 for resolution my eyes are probably too old to notice.

[Gracana]

Regular HD LCD monitors are typical office fare.

[mr_toad]

> But what kind of monitors are you low-DPI people using?

They’re still pretty common in enterprise. So cheap. At this point most desks probably cost more than the PCs on top of them.

TBF, enterprise probably still has to deal with ancient apps that can’t handle higher resolution well.

[jsheard]

Typical DPIs are still all over the place depending on the demographic. Macs have been ~200dpi forever, while cheap PCs are still mostly ~100dpi, and decent PC setups tend to land somewhere in the middle with ~150dpi displays which are pretty dense but not up to Mac Retina standards. Gamers also strongly favor that middle-ground because the ultra-dense Mac-style panels tend to be limited to 60hz.

Zed started out as a Mac-only app, and that's reflected in the way their font rendering works.

[karmakaze]

My 42.5" 4k LG monitor is 104 DPI being Low by macOS conventions.

[EnPissant]

I used to have the same complaint, and recently swapped to 4k monitors. I thought that would solve my zed font problems, but text presentation is still bad. In zed, it feels like there is significantly more spacing between each line compared to vscode (or any other text editor).

[r4victor]

Is it on linux?

[ed_blackburn]

Yes. And Windows.

https://zed.dev/docs/linux

[drcongo]

Mind explaining how / why you have a low DPI monitor? I haven't even seen one in maybe a decade.

[gkbrk]

1080p is the most popular screen resolution by far, and on regular monitors 1080p is "low DPI".

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

[freehorse]

Many people call 1080p/24" "low DPI" these days. Though no idea what OP actually has.

[Octoth0rpe]

Define low dpi. Apple's definition has been >218dpi, which is much higher than 4k@27", which is about the smallest 4k monitor one can buy (exluding 15" portable monitors)

[aldanor]

Perhaps you have a 49'' screen