[Solved] Blurry Text Documents

[Hagar Delest]

I have been using Open Office on my MacBook Air, but I just got a Retina MacBook, and I'm having problems with the text documents not staying in focus. Sometimes they look all right when I open the document, but when I move the cursor, portions of the document become blurry -- usually portions away from the cursor, but not always. This is very frustrating because I am an editor and a writer and I must often read the entire document. Please let me know what I can do to correct this irritating problem. Thanks.

1/25 I've uploaded a small sample:

The blur can be a small area, like this, or whole paragraphs.

BlurExample.png (64.05 KiB) Viewed 5568 times

[robleyd]

See if Q15/A15 in [Tutorial] Mac FAQ provides a solution

[Kae]

Nope, that didn't do anything, well as far as I could try. The color had Generic RGB and Adobe RGB; I tried each but don't think it actually did anything; and the Energy Saver didn't have anything about graphics, so I turned off everything having to do with sleep while on power adapter. No change to the blurry display.

[John_Ha]

When I search Google with blurred text apple I get 5,500,000 hits suggesting it is an Apple Mac problem, and unlikely to be an AOO problem.

A thought. Are you using Edit > Select mode > Block area? That allows you to select a rectangular area in the text - could it be related to your rectangular fuzzy area?

On second thoughts, I see the " m " in your image is partly OK (left) and partly fuzzy (right). This suggests a display hardware (or display driver) problem as the problem is aligned with the screen pixels and not with the characters.

[RoryOF]

Can you confirm that the blurriness is a complete stripe (or stripes) top to bottom on the screen. Also, what resolution is your Macbook Retina?

If you reduce the resolution (say to 1650 x900 or similar), does the problem persist?

[John_Ha]

If you reduce the resolution (say to 1,650 x 900 or similar), does the problem persist?

Rory - good thinking. Screens now come with much higher resolutions than were probably envisaged when OOo was originally written. The requirements merely say "1024 x 768 pixel or higher resolution ..." My screen is 1,920 x 1,080 and works perfectly.

The blurred bit seems to be 64 pixels wide in the uploaded image which suggests a coding or hardware problem as it is 2^6 = 64.

Also, open a simple text editor like Notepad on Windows, or even an email editor. Copy the AOO text to it. Does the problem still occur when you use the same font as is used in AOO?

[RoryOF]

My memory is that there was/is(?) a problem with OO and screens wider than 2560 pixels. I don't know if this has been fixed - OO developers use what equipment they have to hand; not working for a large multinational they cannot summon up state of the art equipment for development and testing.

If the problem is cured when you reduce the screen resolution, then a workaround is to start OO from a batch file; this should switch the screen to the lower (working) resolution, start OO, and when OO exits, switch back to full resolution before exiting. Writing such a batch file for Macs is not within my knowledge.

[Kae]

I looked at the Display options in Settings, and changing the resolution isn't listed as something I could do. The only other thing about display I see is the About this Mac says Graphics Intel HD Graphics 615 1536 MB. Does that tell you what you need to know?

The blur area does seem to be rectangular but often isn't the full width and can be several different patches. If I select the blur area, the resolution fixes itself, at least temporarily. Also, if I go to a different page of the document, the blur does not seem to continue either to the next page or when I return to the first page, but when I move my cursor, the blur usually (but not always) recurs, though not necessarily in the same location.

[John_Ha]

See macOS Sierra: Adjust your display’s resolution which links to Using a Retina display and Opening apps in Low Resolution mode.

The "1536 MB" means the screen is using 1.536 GBytes of the PC memory.

[John_Ha]

If you found what was causing the problem please post it because it will help others with the same problem (and because I am intrigued!!).

[Kae]

I was able to have my soninlaw show me last night how to use the OpenOfficeApp info to select "Open in Low Resolution." I used OO to edit a document this evening and that seems to have fixed the blurriness problem for me.

Thanks for your help.

[John_Ha]

I have raised a bug report asking for the maximum screen resolution to be stated. See Issue 127684 - Please update System Requirements to state the maximum screen resolution supported

[lgusaas]

I just got a Retina MacBook,

Is it a MacBook or a MacBook Pro?

[Kae]

MacBook Retina

[Broggers65]

I had the same issue with blurry text. The option to start Open Office in low resolution mode also fixed the issue on my computer. The issue originally arose around three/four months ago so am not sure what this ties in with, perhaps an OS upgrade as I may not have upgraded when the option was first available, and perhaps the original posting member had upgraded his OS earlier than me?

[John_Ha]

See [Solved] Fuzzy / blurry appearance on Windows 8.1 where soffice.exe is installed by AOO with the Disable display scaling on high DPI settings box ticked.

Does MacOS have this setting? And is it set by default? Does setting it help?

Windows 7 compatibility settings for AOO soffice.exe

[Broggers65]

I didn't see that setting on my mac, but would assume the effect is the same by having the mac open open office in low res mode prevents any scaling for high dpi settings.