Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!malik
From: malik@ut-emx.UUCP (Nadeem Malik)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: How did they make the printer so expensive? ->resolution
Message-ID: <7221@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 23 Oct 88 20:54:05 GMT
References: <5807@zodiac.UUCP> <17784@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <16961@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <7099@ut-emx.UUCP> <7590@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: malik@emx.utexas.edu (Nadeem Malik)
Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 46

In article <7590@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> dyer@arktouros.MIT.EDU (Steve Dyer) 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.  There are indeed 600 dpi printers
>>
>>Actually it is a 33% increase, but it is still quite significant.
>
>If I had a nickel for every comment like this from these "new mathematicians"
>which I've got in the past few days, I'd have enough to buy my first NeXT
>machine.

Sorry, you don't get your nickel here:-) 

>
>Get it folks: (400^2)/(300^2) is roughly 177/100, or a 77% increase.


There is a ~77% increase in dot density, but NOT in the *quality or 
resolution* of the picture, which was under debate. If you would recall the 
original poster had questioned the increase in picture quality if we go from 
300 dpi to 400 dpi. Resolution is the measure of the quality and it provides 
the distinguishability between close objects. It is given in pixels or dots
or lines per unit of length and NOT as its *square* and that is why the
resoultion of the printers is given as 300 *dots per inch*. In short the NeXT 
laserwriter would probably give a 33% increase in quality over the Apple Laser 
Writer. 

This is quite understandable intuitively as well. For example consider a 
printed letter like "C". Its printed quality depends upon the smoothness of 
its edges, which is clearly a function of the dots per inch and not the dot 
density.


>Laser printers operate in two dimensions.

Yes, I can agree with this.

>---
>Steve Dyer
>dyer@arktouros.MIT.EDU
>dyer@spdcc.COM aka {harvard,husc6,ima,bbn,m2c,mipseast}!spdcc!dyer


Nadeem Malik
malik@emx.utexas.edu