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From: minich@d.cs.okstate.edu (Robert Minich)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: Support for various monitor pixel densities??
Message-ID: <1990Dec8.121802.26077@d.cs.okstate.edu>
Date: 8 Dec 90 12:18:02 GMT
References: <27667@cs.yale.edu>
Organization: Oklahoma State University
Lines: 53

by favorini-francis@CS.YALE.EDU (Francis Favorini):
> I've been wondering for a while whether or not the is any current provision
> (or future one) in Mac system software for monitors with pixel densities
> other than 72 dots per inch.

Currently: all dots are 72dpi dots.
Future:    who knows?

> ... I am assuming no attempt is made to rescale fonts and such by system
> or add-on software.  Is this true?  

Yes. I believe it is possible to query a video driver to find the real
resolution of the screen and I suppose a program could attempt to scale
from that, but I don't know of any that do.

> Anyhow, the point is, it seems like an important and not terribly complicated
> problem to be solved.  We don't want to be stuck with 72 dpi forever.  Even
> the NeXT's have 90 dpi monitors.;-)  Anyone at Apple or a hacker who has some
> real info on this care to clue me in?
> 
> Just curious.

  Unfortunately, 72dpi (and even 100dpi) is not that high of resolution.
There are serious problems with scalable graphics (outline fonts, for
example) that are headed for low resolution devices. The quality is just
not that great. (Stay with me, this _is_ going somewhere!) So what has
been done? Hand-tuned fonts are one approach. Hinted fonts are another.
The real uglies come with the more finely tuned graphics: icons,
controls, etc. These would probably not scale very well to 100dpi or
90dpi or whatever unless whatever == a simple multiple of 72.
  I am curious as to what the NeXT does with that unified imaging model.
<big smiley> Other uglies might be title bars, sicn's, label text in the
Finder, etc. Icons might be somewhat doable on multi-bit depth monitors
by some sort of blurring/anti-aliasing. However, I _like_ the sharp
images that typify Mac displays.
  Ideally, Apple would first support very high res monitors (~150dpi) by
scaling one standard pixel to four hires pixels. That should make all
the old things work just fine (assuming they don't do their own bliting)
while allowing new apps to have some really nice looking graphics. Of
course, fonts would look MUCH sharper in all apps. All this capability
would (will?) require a lot of effort to specify and code. At this
point, I can't even decide what would be the "correct" output for a
non-72dpi-multiple monitor, much less suggest something to impose on the
world. Hopefully, we'll all be pleasantly surprised by System 8 with all
the things we've been crying for (preempive multitasking, protected
memory, new memory mgmt model [this one is mine], new print
architecture, support for permissions on non-AppleShare volumes, etc.)
but somehow I'm just not that optimistic. :-(
-- 
|_    /| | Robert Minich            |
|\'o.O'  | Oklahoma State University| "I'm a newcomer here, but does the
|=(___)= | minich@d.cs.okstate.edu  |  net every lay any argument to rest?"
|   U    | - Ackphtth               |                    -- dan herrick