Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!think!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!labrea!polya!shap
From: shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: WYSIWYG
Keywords: WYSIWYG
Message-ID: <4569@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 19 Oct 88 16:05:39 GMT
References: <6937@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <12908@oberon.USC.EDU>
Reply-To: shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 18

In article <12908@oberon.USC.EDU> venkat@brand.usc.edu (V. Venkat) writes:
>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?

Indeed you haven't understood the fundamentals. Several factors apply.
First, the luminance of paper is considerably different from the
luminence of a CRT - an acceptable dot density on one would not be
acceptable (necessarily) on the other.

More important, the fact that your screen fonts look (relatively)
cruddy is no reason why everything you print should look amateurish.
86 DPI is a reasonable compromise between speed of drawing for
interactivity and readability over a long stretch.  It is not a good
compromise for printed text.  Since the problems are different, the
DPI is different.

Jon