Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!ucsd!nosc!baron!ryptyde!dant
From: dant@ryptyde.UUCP (Daniel Tracy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: The Amiga's Future
Message-ID: <41@ryptyde.UUCP>
Date: 9 Jun 91 10:07:38 GMT
References: <5092@orbit.cts.com> <50205@ut-emx.uucp> <_n1H0j?q@cs.psu.edu>
Reply-To: dant@ryptyde.UUCP (Daniel Tracy)
Organization: Ryptyde Timesharing
Lines: 37

Responding to the following:

"Are you sure about this?  I remember reading in a MacWorld a couple of
years ago where they mentioned that the Mac only supports 72dpi
monitors.  Before True Type and ATM you only had bitmap fonts and they
must be done for every display resolution.  Methinks 72dpi is
hardwired into the Mac."

______________________________________________________________________________

Youthinks wrong. Methinks you are unaquanted with the Macintosh graphics device.
The Macintosh looks at monitors as a grid, as opposed to looking at them as a
smooth canvas. On an IBM/Amiga, increasing resolution or making the monitor
bigger only makes the picture on it bigger. On the Macintosh, everything is
just fed into the grid, and monitors can be of any number of pixels (as long
as the shape is rectangular, it will accept any combo!). Increasing the number
of pixels simply has the effect of "zooming out" so you can fit more on the 
monitor. This is also why you can attach multiple monitors to a Mac and have
them work as if they were one, logically connected monitor. That is, you say
"I want this 24-bit color monitor to be to the left of this huge B&W one",
and they act as a single monitor. Dragging the cursor over to the left-hand
border of the color monitor causes it to appear on the B&W one. It uses the
"main" monitor (the upper-left corner) as the 0,0 in the grid. Thus, 
increasing resolution on a Mac has no effect on bitmap fonts. It is this
system that makes Macintosh graphics more flexible than Amiga graphics will
ever be. It also makes it considerably faster (software-wise!), because it 
uses integers to draw to screen, not reals. The above is also my answer to
the following:

"Other systems that have more display options than the Amiga?  Start
naming names, Marc.  Last I counted there were around 20 graphics modes
you can use with workbench."

There are X number of Macintosh video modes, where X is equal to the number
of .28-pitch pixels that would fit on a monitor twice the size of my room.
(I think that was the figure. I forget exactly what the grid's limt was,
but this was an analogy).