Ports using GTK2 and XQuartz (e.g., claws-mail). What is the current status of HiDPI ("retina") support?

[gith-account]

I have installed the claws-mail port on a rMBP running MacOS Sierra 10.12.2 and unfortunately it looks pretty bad with marked aliasing. My desktop is usually scaled to 1440x900 but the effect is equally bad in other resolutions, including 1280x800. The native resolution of the display is 2560x1600 and cannot normally be chosen as working resolution in MacOS.

It seems that both XQuartz and GTK2 are not capable of handling HiDPI, while things should work with xrandr and GTK3:

​https://github.com/XQuartz/xquartz-old-tickets/blob/master/ticket/661.md ​https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92777 ​https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI ​https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4v08jz/how_is_hidpi_these_days/d5ucqv3/

Attempts to port Claws Mail to GTK3 unfortunately seem to have stalled:

​https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1026670-start-0.html ​http://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=2371

The same sadly has to be said about efforts to integrate Claws Mail with native OSX GTK:

​http://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3381 ​http://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/users/2015-May/013032.html

Xrandr with GTK2 does not seem to do the trick:

$ xrandr -q

provides the following information:

xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 640 x 480, current 1440 x 878, maximum 2560 x 1600
default connected 1440x878+0+0 0mm x 0mm
   2560x1600     60.00  
   1280x800      60.00  
   2048x1280     60.00  
   1650x1050     60.00  
   1440x900      60.00     2.00  
   1152x720      60.00  
   840x524       60.00  
   1024x768      60.00  
   800x600       60.00  
   640x480       60.00  
   1440x878       1.00*

Xrandr provides access to a full screen XQuartz desktop:

$ xrandr --output default --mode 2560x1600 --dpi 192

but the DPI setting appears to have no effect on the now tiny looking Claws Mail.

How do other users deal with this on their HiDPI Macs? Are ports which use GTK2 and XQuartz simply unsuited for retina devices?

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

This ticket sounds like a question better asked on the mailing list.

Tickets are for specific bug reports and feature requests.