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From: staff@cadlab.sublink.ORG (Alex Martelli)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: OS cost component of workstation
Message-ID: <315@cadlab.sublink.ORG>
Date: 10 Nov 90 10:14:00 GMT
References: <2840@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <1990Nov6.222057.17797@ico.isc.com> <239@csinc.UUCP> <2858@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Organization: CAD.LAB, Bologna, Italia
Lines: 20

davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) writes:
	...

>  And for text and line drawings you need a total of two colors,
>preferably with high contrast to one another.

A few intermediate shades would be better - four instead of two are
plenty - to make use of anti-aliased rendering for lines, curves, and
fonts.  Although not very popular (who knows why!), anti-aliasing is
a good way to get more "apparent resolution/definition" out of a given
number of pixels, for line and text work.  Apart from that, I agree
with your main point - 640 x 480 is not adequate for text and line work;
still, I believe I'd rather have, say, 1024 x 768 with 4 grey levels 
used for antialiasing, than, oh, 1152 x 928, black-white monochrome.

-- 
Alex Martelli - CAD.LAB s.p.a., v. Stalingrado 45, Bologna, Italia
Email: (work:) staff@cadlab.sublink.org, (home:) alex@am.sublink.org
Phone: (work:) ++39 (51) 371099, (home:) ++39 (51) 250434; 
Fax: ++39 (51) 366964 (work only), Fidonet: 332/401.3 (home only).