Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pyrdc!pyrnj!rutgers!iuvax!silver!chiaravi
From: chiaravi@silver.bacs.indiana.edu (Lucius Chiaraviglio)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG
Keywords: WYSI*A*WYG
Message-ID: <2467@silver.bacs.indiana.edu>
Date: 19 Oct 88 09:14:39 GMT
References: <6937@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <12908@oberon.USC.EDU>
Reply-To: chiaravi@silver.UUCP (Lucius Chiaraviglio)
Organization: Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Indiana University, Bloomington
Lines: 44

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.

	I can't claim to know much about the NeXT machine in particular, but
what is going on here, as what goes on with printing from a Macintosh
(especially to a laser printer but also to ImageWriters) is not quite WYSIWYG
(in which case your complaint would be entirely valid) but WYSIAWYG (I don't
know if this is an official abbreviation -- actually I doubt it -- but it
stands for What You See is Almost What You Get).  What this means is that the
software has an idea of what things are supposed to look like which
(hopefully) matches your idea, and the best mapping of this into the available
resolution is done for each display device, be it screen or printer.  Thus,
you see an 86 dpi (72 dpi on a Macintosh) representation of your document on
your screen, and a 400 dpi (300 dpi on any of the LaserWriters, 216 dpi on an
ImageWriter LQ in Best mode, 144 dpi on an ImageWriter II (I'm not sure about
I) in Best mode, and 72 dpi on any ImageWriter in Faster mode).  On the more
advanced model of LinoTron you would get something like a 2540 dpi
representation of your document (don't quote me on that last number).  The
screen may or may not represent all of the printed page, depending on the
physical dimensions of the screen and the degree of magnification/
demagnification in the screen representation of your document.  I'm not sure
about the NeXT hardware/software combination, but Macintosh software is
supposed to give you neither magnification nor demagnification on a 72 dpi
screen (like the standard Macintosh screens) unless you specifically ask for
it (like Page Preview... in Microsoft Word and Zoom In/Zoom Out in MacDraft
and sundry similar options in other Macintosh programs).

	Hope this helps.

	-- Lucius Chiaraviglio
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-- 
	-- Lucius Chiaraviglio
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