Desktop Zoom: General feedback/issues from a blind person

[acidiclight]

Hi. I'm a severely visually impaired human person thing. I was diagnosed with my vision impairment at a really young age, and have been relying on desktop zoom as a mandatory necessity for using a computer for over half my life (I'm 23). Needless to say I know what feels right for me, and I figured the feedback would be helpful. Here was my experience testing COSMIC's zoom.

1. Max zoom level should be increased. I use a 32" 4K screen with no DPI scaling, because I prefer to have the extra room, keeping in mind I'll be zooming in anyway. I currently use KDE Plasma where the max zoom level is 100x. I'm usually at around 70x-90x zoomed in, and I'd say mid 80 is what's comfortably readable to me with a dark theme.

2. Multi-monitors: I use a second monitor for extra workspace, and for showing an enlarged minimap when playing video games. Handling of multiple monitors isn't perfect. Each display has its own zoom focus area, which is how both Hyprland and Compiz work, but it is very awkward to use compared to macOS, Windows and Kwin. I'm not sure if this is an intentional feature or a bug, but it doesn't feel too great. It also unfortunately doesn't let each montor have its own zoom level, so you can't do things like watch a video on one screen and zoom in on the other. If this is intended, it would go a long way to have individual zoom levels per-screen.

3. The overlay: There is a giant overlay panel that appears when zoomed in. I understand the point of it, it allows you to configure things without needing to hunt through System Settings or learn hotkeys. The problem is it currently gets (and stays) in the way, meaning I can't use the desktop and do more testing than I have. The panel doesn't have any immediately obvious way to hide it, and the "X" button to the far right instead disables zoom. In my case, it directly obstructs the area of my screen where my vision is best.

4. Pressing Meta+Hyphen when fully zoomed out, enables zoom. I'm aware this is currently intended and documented, but it's a problem for me. I have a macro on my mouse bound to zoom in and zoom out. In Kwin, as long as I keep the button held, it keeps zooming in or out. If I ever get lost, I can always hold down the zoom out button to see my entire desktop. In Cosmic, I keep ping-ponging between being zoomed out and zoomed in, and it's somewhat disorienting when I'm trying to find my place.

5. Bugs and weird-feeling things

• "Magnifier Settings" in the zoom overlay goes nowhere, at least I couldn't get it to go anywhere. Is this known?
• At least on my system, the zoom overlay takes forever to react to mouse clicks.
• Ditto, but for hovering over things in the overlay.
• When moving the zoom area is set to "When the mouse pushes an edge", and moving the mouse between displays, things....just....feel weird. I'm not sure why or how, but it does, and it needs more testing that I can't really do.
• Panning the zoom area, at least on my system, feels choppy. It started to give me a slight headache, sadly.
• Likewise, so does zooming in and out. It's hard for me to figure out if it's choppy or just missing an animation, or maybe it could be that it only zooms when I let go of the hotkey? I'm not really sure.

I'm sure most of these issues are already either known or reported, but I just wanted to share my experience with it so far. I know it seemed very negative, but these are genuine game-breaking bugs for me. Despite that, considering the fact this is an alpha, this is EXTREMELY good progress compared to other zoom implementations I've seen around the Waylandverse.

For context on the performance-related stuff, just in case:
I'm on a Ryzen 7 3700X CPU, 64GB of RAM, an NVMe boot and home drive, an AMD Radeon RX-7600XT GPU, and two 4K displays running both at 60hz, no HDR. I also did compile COSMIC myself via AUR package, so it's likely this could have all just been that it's a debug build? Wouldn't personally know how to check.

[feikedonia]

Thank you very much for providing this feedback!

[Drakulix]

Needless to say I know what feels right for me, and I figured the feedback would be helpful. Here was my experience testing COSMIC's zoom.

Thanks!! I really mean it, this kind of feedback is incredibly valuable. So thanks for taking the time. A couple of questions before following up with suggestions and ideas of how to improve your experience:

Max zoom level should be increased.

What lead you to the impression, that there is a limit? We currently don't have one, the only thing that happens is, that at 400% scale the "overlay" - as you call it - stops increasing in size to not block off more and more parts of the desktop and potentially flow over. The desktop itself will still zoom further just fine.

I'm not sure if this is an intentional feature or a bug, but it doesn't feel too great.

I am not sure what exactly this refers to, just the shared zoom level? Or are there other parts of the multi-monitor handling, that feel awkward, regarding the zoom focus area?

The problem is it currently gets (and stays) in the way, meaning I can't use the desktop and do more testing than I have. [...] In my case, it directly obstructs the area of my screen where my vision is best.

Thanks. I feel like adding an option to hide it, is a very obvious improvement, that we should definitely add. Nevertheless do you feel like positioning it differently instead would be helpful in any way? E.g. at the top of bottom of the display? Or is showing the current zoom state just unnecessary noise in your opinion?

"Magnifier Settings" in the zoom overlay goes nowhere, at least I couldn't get it to go anywhere. Is this known?

This might be a bug on your system, for me this opens the accessibility page in cosmic-settings. It might not do something, if that app is either not installed or still on an old version. So this could be an AUR packaging issue worth reporting there.

At least on my system, the zoom overlay takes forever to react to mouse clicks.
Ditto, but for hovering over things in the overlay.
When moving the zoom area is set to "When the mouse pushes an edge", and moving the mouse between displays, things....just....feel weird. I'm not sure why or how, but it does, and it needs more testing that I can't really do.
Panning the zoom area, at least on my system, feels choppy. It started to give me a slight headache, sadly.
Likewise, so does zooming in and out. It's hard for me to figure out if it's choppy or just missing an animation, or maybe it could be that it only zooms when I let go of the hotkey? I'm not really sure.

These at least partially seem like some performance issues. Which obviously shouldn't happen with your kind of setup. Can you tell me what scale factor these were happening at, so I can try to replicate, profile and debug this?

Despite that, considering the fact this is an alpha, this is EXTREMELY good progress compared to other zoom implementations I've seen around the Waylandverse.

Thanks, we are trying!

[acidiclight]

Thanks!! I really mean it, this kind of feedback is incredibly valuable. So thanks for taking the time. A couple of questions before following up with suggestions and ideas of how to improve your experience:

No problem <3

What lead you to the impression, that there is a limit? We currently don't have one, the only thing that happens is, that at 400% scale the "overlay" - as you call it - stops increasing in size to not block off more and more parts of the desktop and potentially flow over. The desktop itself will still zoom further just fine.

I can't read the overlay easily, but I wasn't referring to the size of the overlay. I just tried to zoom in as far as I could with Meta+Equals, and couldn't seem to get it to a comfortable-enough zoom level for me. If it was zooming in further, I couldn't tell. Is it possible that the zoom increment is just really small once you start going above 10x zoom? It seemed to me like it maxed out there.

I am not sure what exactly this refers to, just the shared zoom level? Or are there other parts of the multi-monitor handling, that feel awkward, regarding the zoom focus area?

It's the general handling of multiple monitors that feels awkward to me. Like I said, both Hyprland and Compiz behave the same in terms of having individual zoom areas per display, but in Compiz, each display also has its own individual zoom level. It still felt awkward in general when I used to use it, but the shared zoom level makes it feel even more awkward in COSMIC.

Thanks. I feel like adding an option to hide it, is a very obvious improvement, that we should definitely add. Nevertheless do you feel like positioning it differently instead would be helpful in any way? E.g. at the top of bottom of the display? Or is showing the current zoom state just unnecessary noise in your opinion?

I can't speak for other blind users here since everyone has their own preference, but yes - in my opinion, the overlay is just noise. It's in the way and I'd rather it not show at all, or at least have the option to make it never show. I know the hotkeys to zoom in/out, and the specific zoom factor is irrelevant to me as long as I can read my screen. I'd rather just see what's on my screen.

Windows Magnifier has an always-on-top window for controlling it and Narrator, and it constantly gets in my way even if I minimize it (because an accidental alt+tab can bring it back) - that's why I no longer use Windows. It's not the exact same as what COSMIC does currently, and although it does annoy me personally for the same reason COSMIC's overlay gets in my way, it can at least be moved to anywhere on any screen by the user. I think having that option would be nice as well for those who need/want it.

This might be a bug on your system, for me this opens the accessibility page in cosmic-settings. It might not do something, if that app is either not installed or still on an old version. So this could be an AUR packaging issue worth reporting there.

That's likely the case, yeah, though cosmic-settings was installed. (I needed to use it to rearrange my monitors)

These at least partially seem like some performance issues. Which obviously shouldn't happen with your kind of setup. Can you tell me what scale factor these were happening at, so I can try to replicate, profile and debug this?

Any of them, honestly. It doesn't seem to matter how far zoomed in I am.

Thanks, we are trying!

I really appreciate it <3