Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!hermes!dzenc
From: dzenc@hermes.ai.mit.edu (Daniel Zenchelsky)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG
Keywords: WYSIWYG
Message-ID: <3175@hermes.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 21 Oct 88 00:52:09 GMT
References: <6937@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <12908@oberon.USC.EDU>
Reply-To: dzenc@hermes.ai.mit.edu.UUCP (Daniel Zenchelsky)
Organization: The MIT AI Lab, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 30

In article <12908@oberon.USC.EDU> venkat@brand.usc.edu (V. Venkat) writes:
>With a 17" diameter screen i.e. apprx 12" X 12" screen and a 1024X1024 pixels
>-- the screen resolution will be about 86 pixels per inch.
>Since the printing is essentially WYSIWYG a laser printer with 86 dpi
>will suffice. What is the use of a 400 dpi laser printer unless the screen
>represents only a part of the printed page and you have some scrolling 
>mechanism? Maybe I haven't understood the fundamentals here. Can someone
>illuminate me further on this matter. Much thanks.
>
>V. Venkat.


Thats the beauty of PostScript. It is NOT Bit-Mapped, it is an object oriented
language. Instead of defining each of the dots on a circle, you tell the
printer (or postscript display) to draw a circle of radius x.  It then prints
the circle at the highest resolution it can. on an 86 pixel per inch screen
the circle will come out nice looking, on a 300 DPI printer, it will look
VERY smooth, and on  a 400 DPI printer, I doubt you'd be able to tell it
came from a printer!

-Dan

+-----------------------------------------------------------+
|  ______                                                   |
| ||   |o|  Daniel Zenchelsky  --  dzenc@hermes.ai.mit.edu  |
| ||___| |                                                  |
| |   _  |  "If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist" |
| \_[]_|_|                                                  |
|                                                           |
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