text becomes blurry

Jonathan Patterson · Nov 20, 2021, 3:10 AM

Does anyone have any idea why all the text except the current line would lose “focus” and become blurry in about 2 seconds? Everything is completely unreadable!

Does anyone else find this odd & perplexing?
This is not happening in other apps… It happens with the “clear font” preference checked or unchecked, it happens regardless of the font I choose.͏͏ It certainly has not always been doing this!

I’m using Windows 7 Ultimate fully updated 64bit.

Any suggestions, ideas, thoughts or insight would really be very much appreciated!

PeterJones · Nov 20, 2021, 6:45 PM

@jonathan-patterson ,

Sorry, never seen such a thing.

With TextFX installed, I am wondering how old your Notepad++ is – because most people don’t have that installed anymore. (?-menu’s Debug Info would tell us that, and other useful information; and, btw, if your Notepad++ is old enough that it doesn’t have the Debug Info entry in the ? menu, that’s telling you something right there.)

Maybe you have a weird plugin (again, you didn’t show us ? menu’s Debug Info, which would have told us).

Or maybe you’ve got a strange font, or some other application running that is intentionally blurring things.

Considering that Windows 7 is 10+ years since it’s last release, and nearly 2 years past the end of its extended support, I’m not sure that anyone will be able to replicate your problem, or do more than wild guesses as to your difficulty.

Ekopalypse · Nov 21, 2021, 10:10 AM

@peterjones said in text becomes blurry:

Considering that Windows 7 is 10+ years since it’s last release, and nearly 2 years past the end of its extended support, I’m not sure that anyone will be able to replicate your problem

I know at least one person who still uses Windows 7, but he doesn’t have this problem.
Hmm … I like talking about him in the third person.
Gives everything a noble touch - maybe I should stick with that. :-)

Jonathan Patterson · Dec 5, 2021, 1:18 PM

@peterjones Thank you so much for your response!

I keep Notepad++ updated to the latest version whenever I’m prompted that one is available. I also forgot to mention that this happens with any font.

Although I have realized that there is at least one other app that suffers from this same issue; so it can’t be Notepad++

I’ve also discovered that if I launch Notepad++ immediately after start-up it doesn’t happen. So, I’m beginning to at least collect some clues.

gstavi · Dec 7, 2021, 11:44 AM

@jonathan-patterson

There are lots of issues with High DPI monitors. Notepad++ tries to be “DPI Aware” and many of the features around this are new to Windows. Could be that a related change is not backward compatible with Windows 7.

Generally the blurry area is rendered by Scintilla and not by Notepad++ itself. And Scintilla has its own DPI challenges.

Do you use custom DPI for the OS? Does it make a difference if you change it?

If you run Notepad++ from a shortcut, enter its properties and observe compatibility tab. There aren’t as many settings as newer Windows but there is still High DPI related settings that may make a difference.

See if enabling/disabling Notepad++ option “Use DirectWrite” makes a difference.

Try playing with your video adapter properties, enabling/disabling 2D optimizations, even if you wouldn’t want to change it permanently, it could help identify the problem area.