[Unsolvable for now] Mint Update and Bluetooth icons not properly scaled to HiDPI

[Gofer83]

Hello,
is there a way to properly scale (or manually replace with higher resolution ones) the Mint Update and Bluetooth icons on the panel?
Their lower-res really spoils my HiDPI experience in Mint.

[songhuijohn]

You can increase the height of the panel area and the icons in the panel area will adjust their size to fit the panel area.
To do this do the following:
- position the cursor in an unused portion of the panel area and click the right button on the mouse
- a drop down window will appear - left mouse clip panel settings option
- turn on the Allow Cinnamon to scale test and icons according to the panel height
- use the slider below to adjust the height of the panel area to a height that is good for you

Hope this is what you were looking for.

[Gofer83]

@songhuijohn
Unfortunately, this does not change those two icons resolution, just their scale.
The case is still open...

[songhuijohn]

What resolution do you want and what is the resolution of your monitor/screen?
I am not sure what you mean by scale in this situation - my understanding of scale is the relationship between an image size compared to an actual size - for instance on a map the scale might be 1/4" equals a mile or on a floor plan a 1/4" equals a foot.
Since there is no actual size to an icon, I am not sure the tern scale is applicable for an icon.
Are these icons in the panel not smooth when you increase the height of the panel area?
Does these icons have unexpected space when you increase the height of the panel area?
What about the resolution of these icons when you increase the height of the panel area do you not like?

Sorry about so many questions but would like to help you resolve you concern.

[Gofer83]

@songhuijohn

What I want?
I want those two mentioned icons to have the same "crispness" as other icons on the panel (look at the attachment in 1st post).

What I mean by scale?
Imagine you have two images. One's resolution is 720p (1280x720px) and the second's is UHD (3840x2160px) . Both can be scaled (their size set to) to 1920x1080 pixels.
In first example, the image will be blurry and not that detailed and crisp as in the second example, because, in the first example, all available pixels must be stretched to fit new size, and in the second example, all pixels simply need to be squashed, to fit in new size.
Test it yourself with gimp to see what I mean.

Are these icons in the panel not smooth when you increase the height of the panel area?

No, they are not. They get bigger, but still blurry.

Does these icons have unexpected space when you increase the height of the panel area?

No, they scale correctly.

What about the resolution of these icons when you increase the height of the panel area do you not like?

Their resolution does not change - and that's the problem here.

[songhuijohn]

I suspect the difference in appearance between the icons in the panel area is caused by the make up of the icon.
The icons that appear to be less crisp contain thin curved lines - these thin curved lines make it more difficult to display in a pixel format no matter what the resolution is.

I suspect to get a full explanation of how the icons in the panel area are resized to fit an enlargement of the panel area you would need to talk to the developers of the code.

Did a little bit more investigation:

The menu icon is not as crisp as the other icons in the panel area.

The native resolution of the monitor/screen has a direct correlation to the crispness of the icons in the panel area.
I have Linux installed on two computers:
1. a laptop with a screen that has a resolution of 1280 x 800 - not so crisp
2. a desktop with a monitor that has a resolution of 1440 x 900 - crisper than the laptop

[Gofer83]

In previous mints there was an option to change the updater icon from its menu. In 18.1 its simply gone. Maybe thats why there is a problem with those icons - devs made some changes.
Those icons must be somewhere in the system, cause they are displayed. And most probably they are *.png files, cause *.svg are crisp in every scale.
Question is: where are they?

[Gofer83]

In Mint 18.2 still the same issue.
Can someone explain that phenomenon to me?
Why only BT and Updater icons are not scaled properly?

[Gofer83]

In Mint 18.3 the issue still exists.
I don't get it

[Costas]

I have a new installation of linux mint cinnamon, hiDPI display (3200x1800) and it looks fine, though there is a fine fuzzines.

I found that the icons are stored in

/usr/share/icons/hicolor/[...]/status

You can find the svg inside there too.

I don't know which size is used, i tried 48 and 256 but didn't seem to do anything (with cinnamon restart rather than reboot).

Try them and see how it goes!

[Gofer83]

Finally, an naswer directly from the Devs, although, the case cannot be solved by now, its good to know, they are aware of the problem

Hi Danny,

It’s down to how systray works. It’s really hard/technical to explain.. the other icons you see are applets, they’re rendered by Cinnamon. The systray icons are rendered by GTK, at fixed sizes, underneath and clipped… it’s a technology GNOME doesn’t want to continue with. We’ve got no real alternatives. There are indicators, they’re rendered client-side (so they solve this problem) but they lack a lot of basic functionality and bring their own issues. We’ve been planning to come up with a new solution for this, it’s on the roadmap long-term but it’s not likely to land in Mint 19.