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From: avi@hpcehfe.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Too good to be true ?
Message-ID: <3110003@hpcehfe.HP.COM>
Date: Tue, 3-Mar-87 12:52:40 EST
Article-I.D.: hpcehfe.3110003
Posted: Tue Mar  3 12:52:40 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Mar-87 07:12:32 EST
References: <1347@umn-cs.UUCP>
Organization: Corporate Human Factors Engineering
Lines: 50

/ hpcehfe:comp.text / amit@umn-cs.UUCP (Neta Amit) /  3:34 pm  Mar  1, 1987 /

> 		   Big Monitor Lets You See What You'll Get
> 		   ======================================== 
>
> I have some related questions:
> 
> 1. The screen  measures 15" diagonally, meaning roughly 9x12". Resolution-
>    wise, we're talking 135dpi (1200/9 = 133 ; 1664/12 = 138). Now, that's an
>    excellent resolution, to be sure, but not nearly as good as 300dpi. Did I
>    miss anything, or is there really some sort of compression going on?

The answer can be found in your own posting:

> features include ... support for four shades of gray.

They're claiming that the four shades of gray are effectively equivalent to
a 2x2 black&white array taking up the same real estate.  I.e., the
effective resolution is 270x278, which is pretty close to 300x300.  Note that
to fit an 8.5"x11" 300x300 dpi image onto a 270x278 dpi screen requires
9.5"x11.9" of real estate -- approximately what they're providing (and of
course one could always discount some margin space).  However, the size
of the displayed image (using the same bitmap) will be 11%x9% bigger.

As an aside, the claim that one can easily trade off grayscale and resolution
is rather simplistic, and has certainly never been justified in a controlled
experiment.  Even if the grayscale provides better positioning accuracy
of the edges of characters (or lines, etc.), there is little more detail
in the grayscale image than in a black&white one at the same resolution.
It is the human visual system's inability to resolve the gray component
that causes a tradeoff in intensity for perceived size.  Needless to say,
various conditions -- which have yet to be fully evaluated -- must be met
in order for this tradeoff to occur, and noone has yet quantified the
tradeoff even under very controlled reading conditions.  Furthermore, the
fatiguing impact of providing *blurry* edges for the visual system to resolve
as spatially-displaced sharp ones has yet to be studied.

For (much) more on this topic, see the references I posted a couple of
weeks ago, or get in touch with me.

> 3. Never heard before about the WYSIWYG format -- what is it?

What You See Is What You Get -- and I'll let someone else open this can
of worms.

Avi Naiman
Hewlett Packard & University of Toronto
(415) 857-6310
avi%hpcehfe@hplabs.hp.com
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