In article ,
"2" wrote:
That must have something to do with the way the image is formed, because we don’t have trouble seeing more detail on paper.
It has to do with the assumptions that programmers make when they design user interface controls, more likely.
User interface objects on a computer screen are often designed to be a certain number of pixels in size; for example, the standard size of a button is typically 20 pixels high. If a screen has a resolution of 200 pixels per inch, that makes the size of a button one-tenth of an inch high.
Now, it’s easy to see an object one-tenth of an inch high on paper. But we typically look at a sheet of paper from a much closer distance than we look at a computer monitor–and a sheet of paper isn’t glowing, it’s using reflected light. Looking at an object a tenth of an inch high on a glowing screen that’s much farther away is a whole ‘nother story. 🙂
A computer screen that had a higher resolution but did not make the objects smaller would probably look significantly better. If the size of a button were the same on a 200 pixel per inch screen, say, and the button were composed of more pixels, it’d probably look quite good. But that’d involve dramatically re-thinking the way things are displayed on a screen.
The Mac uses PDF (in OS X) or QuickDraw (in older versions) to draw images on the screen,a nd it is possible for a programmer to write a program that would display its user interface elements and text and so forth on the screen at the same physical size regardless of the resolution of the monitor if he so chose, because both PDF and QuickDraw are resolution independent. (He wouldn’t be able to use pre-built OS controls; he’d have to draw them himself.) On Windows, which does not have a resolution-independent system for displaying things on the screen, it’d be much more difficult. (Windows Vista was supposed to include this kind of functionality, but Microsoft has announced that it has been dropped.)
—
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink: all at
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html Nanohazard, Geek shirts, and more:
http://www.villaintees.com