Re: 20" Cinema Displays 1024x1600
Re: 20" Cinema Displays 1024x1600
- Subject: Re: 20" Cinema Displays 1024x1600
- From: John Fieber <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 08:57:33 -0500
On Wednesday, March 5, 2003, at 07:08 PM, Broudy, David wrote:
It'd be nice if we had the option to set the resolution of the GUI,
e.g.
something like telling the OS that I want the equivalent to a
72/96/whatever
ppi display no matter what the physical resolution of the display is. I
don't think any OS lets you do that. I don't mean simply resetting the
resolution of the display but that of the OS.
The X11 system allows you to set the ppi to whatever you want, but not
that many application (and text in particular) behave gracefully if you
deviate from 75ppi or 100ppi.
The problem is NOT that the native resolution of an LCD is too high.
That is an absurd position, like complaining that a 1200dpi laser
printer has too high of a resolution and that manufacturers should
stick to 300dpi. No, the problem is that we are stuck with software
that is HARDWIRED to some fixed notion of display resolution that is
getting further and further from reality every day.
In my mind, this ranks as the top fumbled opportunity that the Apple
had in transitioning to MacOS X. Here we have a sophisticated
resolution independent display architecture (Quartz) and what do we do?
Perpetuate absurd assumption that every display is 72ppi.
Underlying the problem is that GUI on the Mac are invariably laid out
in pixel dimensions, not absolute dimensions. Apple's Aqua guidelines
even specify everything in pixels. Interface Builder works in pixels.
Until that is fixed, we are stuck in this absurd world where higher
resolution displays are a BUG instead of a FEATURE.
What I think they should have done with OSX/Quartz is to make Interface
Builder (and the Aqua guidelines) work in points instead of pixels.
For people porting OS9 applications, there should be an (default?)
option to have pixel dimensions re-interpreted as points which would
work just fine for many applications built around standard GUI
components. Of course, applications that need pixel level control will
not have such an easy transition, but they really need to make the
break from 72ppi at SOME point.
Granted, I have not thought deeply through all the issues, such as
dragging windows across displays of different resolutions, but this
72ppi assumption MUST be burried at some point.
With a PROPER display architecture, legibility should INCREASE with
resolution, not decrease.
-john
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