Philippe Noth said:

these icons render correctly in Studio 2019 and 2017

They rendered correctly in Studio 2021 either until CU5. I remember a topic on the 26th of April (roughly) about the issue of microscopic fonts with high DPI monitors and 100% scaling. Next day after that discussion an update (CU5) was released to "fix" the issue. What you see now is the result of that "fix".

Stepan Konev said:

They rendered correctly in Studio 2021 either until CU5

Thanks for the clarification. Yes, I had the impression that Studio 2021 displayed these icons perfectly well at some time, but I could not be 100% sure.

I am not satisfied with Steven’s answer. In the past, I already fiddled a lot with the scaling parameters in Windows, the add-on, Studio’s font sizes, even hacks with manifest files… just to make Studio 2019 and Passolo usable. And even though it is still not perfect – for example, the Termbase Viewer is unusable – the panels and features I need in my everyday work render OK in Studio 2019… and rendered OK in Studio 2021. I am not going to break everything just because of one single buggy icon, that, unfortunately, is shown right in the middle of the editor window. 

It seems that RWS and Steven never bothered to analyze seriously these scaling issues. To a complex and annoying issue, they always provide the same standards answers – recommendations that mostly do not work, see the Termbase discussion:

• the slightest change in the Windows scaling parameters will affect hundreds of applications. It is not true that changing a global parameter in Window will magically fix a buggy icon in a software without serious side effects elsewhere.
• the add-on may fix some scaling-related issues in Studio, but will break others. The menu bar may become oversized, some important dialog boxes unusable – I went through this already. Test it and you will see!

So please RWS, do regression testing and render these icons like before.

Philippe Noth… I didn’t call you ignorant. But your reply was… especially for such an experienced developer. To think we wouldn’t already do the very things you mentioned.

Philippe Noth

Hello, as a fellow developer I want to provide you some insight into the challenges we had with HiDPI. Firstly, we have the following requirements as input: we need to support various DPI & scaling ranges on multiple versions of Windows (7, 8, 8.1, and a multitude of sub versions of 10) for different monitor sizes (200% scaling on a narrow screen is not the same on a wide screen), multiple monitors with different DPI and different technologies (Trados uses WPF, WinForms and raw C++ for exactly the area you mentioned in the screenshot)

When we started working on this change we had to decide between the newest algorithms that Windows was automatically using or do it ourselves. If we were to allow MS to render Trados, what it would have done is render it at low resolution and upscale it. Their latest anti-aliasing algorithms are great, but they are only available on the latest WIndows 10 updates (v 1903). If we were to fully let Windows handle the scaling we would get blurry icons on some older version of Windows 10.

As a developer and user of paid software I do understand your disappointment, yet in spite of these current setbacks we still think it’s better for us to handle all these rescalling than to be at the mercy of a new Windows update.

Regarding your mention that other software works perfectly, an example would be Microsoft Teams that has issues on different versions of Windows.

For more info please see the following link related to Windows scaling issues for high-DPI devices.

You can imagine the effort needed to fully test all these combinations. It would be of great help for us if you tell your OS version, Per Monitor scaling and Resolution, which one of these monitors is your primary and finally on which of these monitors you startup Trados.

Hi Bogdan Costisor,

I am sorry to jump into your convo with Philippe Noth, but this issue is #1 for me either. I appreciate all your effort and all the things you do for us users, but could you please add your/RWS recommendation as to which monitor works best with Trados Studio? Just like other system requirements (RAM, free disc space, SSD, whatever else you list there) on your System Requirements page... From what I can see on that page at the moment: "As a minimum requirement... blah-blah-blah... a screen resolution of 1024x768", my recommended [by Windows] screen resolution is 1920x1080, which is higher than the above-mentioned minimum. But it still doesn't perform well with 100% scaling. Ok, I admit it was my mistake to choose this type of monitor for Trados, forget it. Now that I am ready to buy another monitor that fits Trados better, can you advise more specific screen requirements so that I could go to the store with this information and say: "Hi guys, I want a specific monitor with these particular screen requirements recommended by RWS for Trados". Is it possible [to give a specific recommendation on this]?

Hi Stepan Konev, your screen resolution is fine (1920 x 1080 is something that I also use).

If you are using Windows 10 I would recommend keeping it updated. If you are using multiple monitors, then I would recommend setting your preferred monitor as Primary (there is an option in Windows’ Display Settings). Moving Trados from one monitor to another doesn’t work properly for some Windows Versions and some monitor combinations (Full HD vs wide 4k for instance). The other recommendations don’t affect the DPI scaling.

However, if you see issues on Full HD with 100% scaling then would you kindly provide us with some screenshots and also the Windows version. We need to identify all the areas we are currently missing since the fix needs to be applied per Icon/Image/Control.

Bogdan Costisor

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-7100 CPU @ 3.90GHz 
RAM: 8GB
64-bit system
Windows 10 Pro
Version: 20H2
Build: 19042.1110

All three displays:


Main display, 100% scaling:


Main display, 150% scaling:

Same here (175% scaling):

Dear Bogdan,

Again, this particular problem is not about making scaling work altogether, at least for me (Stepan seems to have additional issues). It is only about one icon that has suddenly become larger and now covers the left side of the target column. Please see the screen captures in my initial message. It is the icon that shows both the QA status – Error/Info/Warning – and the locked status. Everything else in the UI that could be affected by scaling settings remained apparently untouched – or at least I saw no change with a negative impact of my everyday work.

I can provide you with the requested information, but maybe the easiest would be that you access remotely my laptop so that you can fetch any insights you need. I am available today & tomorrow any time.

The bug is easy to reproduce: it shows up on each laptop I own, for every GroupShare project or package I am being sent. And in all Studio versions from SR1 16.1.6.4276 up to the current SR1 16.1.8.4404.

Stepan Konev Could you point out please where you see issues in the first 3 images. I might be missing specific icons or text that is not rendered correctly. The last image with the editor is self explanatory

They are just too small. With 100% scaling I see microscopic text with plenty of useless space around. This is the only issue. I am happy with 150%, but the above mentioned problem appears:


plus some other issues like missing interface elements:

Half screen is empty with 100% scaling... With letters that can't be read normally.

Can it be like this? :)

Philippe Noth The editor was not touched yet by the new changes we did on the Ribbon Area (the top bar with all the buttons). However I do have a new series of questions for bothe you and Stepan Konev.

• If you change your main display scaling to 100% and then start Studio, do you still see this issue? Please keep in mind that Studio will not resize properly if you change scaling on main display and not restart.
• We use the Main Display scaling factor, so are you by any chance opening Studio on a secondary display and then move it back to Main Display? This is a scenario where we saw issues in the past (one of those sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't)

Thank you, this is very useful.

Thank you, this is very useful.