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From: jpexg@mit-hermes.AI.MIT.EDU (John Purbrick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Personal Pascal and Monochrome.
Message-ID: <2882@mit-hermes.AI.MIT.EDU>
Date: Sat, 24-Oct-87 20:48:32 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-herm.2882
Posted: Sat Oct 24 20:48:32 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Oct-87 01:26:18 EST
References: <22985KSN@PSUVMB>
Organization: MIT AI Lab, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 27

In article <22985KSN@PSUVMB>, KSN@PSUVMB.BITNET (Peter A. Krupa) writes:
>      
> Anyway, I'm really considering getting a monochrome system instead.
> I'm more interested in the finer resolution than color and games
> (who needs their roommates bashing their computer playing PAC-MAN?).
> Advantages to monochrome? Disadvantages?  Opinions sought.
> Spiny_Norman

I have monochrome and wouldn't change. What bugs me is how many programs
are written for color displays only, including some programs that don't
use graphics. Anyway, it's easy enough to write software that figures
out which display is in use and uses patterns instead of colors for its
graphics.

If you're a programmer rather than a games-player, you'll appreciate a 
high-res display. I've found that even a very good color monitor, like
the NEC Multisync, produces monochrome text inferior to a modest monochrome
screen, such as the amber monitor on a Leading Edge Model D. And the ST
mono display is better than that, with a 70Hz non-interlaced refresh and
400*640 square pixels (PC-compatibles have 720*348--more than twice as
many pixels in the X as in the Y dimension). Obviously, there are things 
that you'll never be able to do without color, but if your graphics call
for drawing lines, naturally you'll want to get them as fine as possible. 
The Macintosh, of course, uses this philosophy (supposedly King Jobs said
that if people had dense enough monochrome graphics they'd never miss color.)
and the ST ("Jackintosh", as it used to be called) copied this with higher
resolution.