Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!amdahl!oliveb!sun!thetone!swilson
From: swilson%thetone@Sun.COM (Scott Wilson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: How did they make the printer so expensive?
Message-ID: <73945@sun.uucp>
Date: 21 Oct 88 03:55:20 GMT
References: <5807@zodiac.UUCP> <17784@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <16961@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <7099@ut-emx.UUCP> <40852@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
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Reply-To: swilson@sun.UUCP (Scott Wilson)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
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In article <40852@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> spolsky-joel@CS.YALE.EDU (Joel Spolsky) writes:
>In article <7099@ut-emx.UUCP> malik@emx.UUCP (Nadeem Malik) writes:
>| In article <16961@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> lange@cs.ucla.edu (Trent Lange) writes:
>| | 
>| | An increase from 300 dpi to 400 dpi is a nearly 80 percent
>| | increase in actual resolution, which I call more than slight.  
>|  
>| Actually it is a 33% increase, but it is still quite significant.
>
>No, Trent was right. 300 dpi =  90000 dpi^2
>                     400 dpi = 160000 dpi^2
>                               ------
>                              77.7778% increase

In an attempt to be precise I think it would be more correct to
say that 300 dpi to 400 dpi represents a ~77% percent increase
in pixel density (i.e., the number of pixels per unit area).  Whether
or not a percent increase in pixel density is equivalent to the
same percent increase in resolution is a matter of definition.  If
you were, for instance, to define resolution as the thickness of the
smallest line that could be represented on the page then 300 dpi to 400
dpi is a 33% increase in resolution.  Does anyone know if there are
standard definitions of resolution for CS or physics?  Maybe we
need to call one flavor "linear resolution."


--
Scott Wilson		arpa: swilson@sun.com
Sun Microsystems	uucp: ...!sun!swilson
Mt. View, CA