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Comment on Pharo 8.0parent

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This is probably the most requested feature since at least Pharo 4

I don't see any page where it says this is the most requested feature. If it was, it would've been developed by now.

It's kinda funny, few hours ago there was a post on the frontpage by burntsushi on the terrible way FOSS developers are treated. And here we have a live example of the usual drive-by commenters who take one glance at the project and decide their own niche requested feature is the most important one.

I am a Smalltalk enthusiast who worked with Cincom ST, Dolphin ST (when it was still a thing), Squeak, Amber, and Pharo. I would be happy to use Pharo. It is so beautiful. It is full-featured. It would be a joy to work with... but I can’t, because I see the pixels.

Pharo’s rendering layer is complicated, to say the least. I made a few approaches in attempting to figure out how it works and perhaps starting adapting it to hidpi screens... but it is a really complicated endeavor. I am not demanding anything from Pharo developers, I am just saying it is a pity I can’t use this beautiful, innovative Smalltalk system. Pixelated UI among the smooth lines of other apps make it unusable for me, and I am not smart enough to fix it.

I asked about this on the mailing list a while back. Apparently it requires changes in the VM, and as you can imagine there are fewer people working on the VM side. This must also be a problem for Squeak, too, but they work around it by having better options for scaling morphic components. Obviously it needs to be addressed.

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