How to double the size of all UI elements

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We have a few programs that were designed to fit on the QVGA screen (320x240) of a handheld bar code scanning unit. The manufacturer of these units has now changed over to VGA screens (640x480) which means our programs are now only a quarter of the size they should be. Is there any quick way to get windows to double the size of all UI elements by setting some kind of mapping mode? The first thought was to use high DPI but that's only user specific for windows 7 / 2008 R2 and above, no good for 2003 / 2008 servers with terminal services.

The programs are written in C/C++ using Windows API only. (no MFC etc.)

Posted 4-Aug-11 1:23am

Steve Thresher

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 7-Aug-11 2:53am

Why?
--SA

2 solutions

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CPallini · Answer 1 · 2011-08-04T01:41:00

Solution 1

This MSDN example looks promising: "Using Coordinate Spaces and Transformations"[^].

Posted 4-Aug-11 1:41am

CPallini

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Emilio Garavaglia 4-Aug-11 8:19am

I was tempted to answer "by reducing to 1/2 the distance from the monitor ..." :-))

CPallini 4-Aug-11 8:28am

Right! however I guess the 1/2 factor is wrong. :-D

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 7-Aug-11 2:53am

I guess not everyone is a physicist as you are... :-)
--SA

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 7-Aug-11 3:01am

OK, the information you provided is very good to know, my 5.
However, the OP's request itself looks questionable to me. At the same time, I know there are some cases when it's reasonable, but they are pretty rare.

Please see my arguments against scaling in my solution.
--SA

Steve Thresher 4-Aug-11 9:11am

Thanks for the suggestion but I was hoping for something much simpler to give us the time to re-work our UI libraries to support scaling.

CPallini 4-Aug-11 9:14am

It actually looks simple to me. You have just to use the 'case SCALE' statements (well the factor should be 2.0 instead of 0.5).

Steve Thresher 4-Aug-11 9:26am

Those functions are device context specific. I was looking for some kind of option to apply scaling to the whole app (windows, fonts, standard dialogs).

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Answer 2 · 2011-08-06T20:58:00

Solution 2

Sorry for not answering your exact question; I simply think the idea to link the size of application to the size of the screen is wrong. When a user purchases a monitor which is twice as big as the previous one, she or he does not want to have application windows scaled by two. Instead, more typically, she or he hopes to see four times more information at the same time. By your request you break this hope.

Also, it's much better to write resolution-tolerant applications. You will find some ideas in my past answers:
GUI Apperance - C#.Net[^],
Zom Out malfunctions when Screen resolution changes[^].

—SA

Posted 6-Aug-11 20:58pm

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

Comments

barneyman 7-Aug-11 3:41am

I get the impression from the original OP is that he has quite a common commercial software problem - how to get the customer off my back for long enough to develop the solution he *actually* wants

Steve Thresher 7-Aug-11 11:31am

We have a few bespoke apps that are designed to run on the previous version of these units. The problem is the manufacturer has changed screens from QVGA to VGA.

http://www.motorola.com/Business/US-EN/Business+Product+and+Services/Mobile+Computers/Handheld+Computers/MC55A0

The rest of the software is designed to run on standard monitors which means it can be resized as required.