So, still no HiDPI/Retina support. This is probably the most requested feature since at least Pharo 4, and nobody seems to be interested in implementing it.
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.
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.
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...
Also, statscounter doesn't account for high resolution displays at all, grouping them all as "other". And these are around 20%.
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).
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.
It'd also be interesting if they were even checking physical resolution or virtual (scaled) resolution.
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.
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.