h a l f b a k e r yExpensive, difficult, slightly dangerous, not particularly effective... I'm on a roll.
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The computer I'm using now can handle graphics resolutions up to 1600x1200. However, Windows and many of its applications become unusable at ultra-high resolutions, because though you can enlarge some fonts and widgets, most bitmaps become too small to properly see and manipulate.
What I'm proposing
is a program, most likely at the OS or graphics driver level, that would use an ultra-high resolution to show fonts or vector graphics (basically, anything scalable), but would increase the size of bitmaps to compensate. For example, it could use 1600x1200 to render fonts and then double the size of all bitmaps, creating what is effectively an 800x600 display with less pixelization or blurring of fonts.
(Of course the easiest solution would be to find an OS/windowing system that's truly resolution independent. It's finding a way to make this work with existing software that's the tricky part.)
After Effects in Cinema
http://www.adobe.co...bpictures/main.html
Adobe After Effects used for high profile movie and television opening and closing credits. [thumbwax, Aug 28 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]
OS X feedback
http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/
Tell them to implement this [sadie, Aug 28 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]
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Maybe I wasn't clear. One doesn't need 1600x1200 on a normal-sized monitor, in part for the reasons UnaBubba mentions (the other reason that many bitmapped images are designed for 75-100 dpi or so, and don't look good at other resolutions). But if you're going to do 800x600, why not take advantage of that high-resolution capability to sharpen the fonts? |
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Well, in theory this can be done in MS Windows. You would need to write a display driver that conforms to the appropriate standards and does the conversion, and all existing programs should continue to work fine. |
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Of course things like this are never as easy as they sound. |
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Rods Tiger had an epiphany about something like this, only on an even larger scale, didn't he? |
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In other words, you're largely seeking to have the "scaling" option in MS-Word and [IIRC] Opera be globally available. Sounds like a reasonable idea; not sure if it's doable or not. |
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"...Windows and many of its applications become unusable at ultra-high resolutions, because though you can enlarge some fonts and widgets, most bitmaps become too small to properly see and manipulate...What I'm proposing...would use an ultra-high resolution to show fonts or vector graphics...but would increase the size of bitmaps to compensate...it could use 1600x1200 to render fonts and then double the size of all bitmaps, creating...an 800x600 display with less pixelization or blurring of fonts." |
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Maybe I don't get it, but what does OS resolution have to do with graphics DPI? Your average screen resolution is ~72dpi and is probably <100dpi even at the high end. If what you want is better resolution while maintaining aspect, what you need is a larger monitor (in [bookworm]'s case, a monitor of twice the size), end of story. |
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The graphics (icons/bitmaps)don't get smaller, they *appear* to get smaller. A 30-pixel graphic seems bigger at 800x600 because there are fewer pixels being represented on the screen; therefore each one takes up more screen area. At 1600x1280 the 30-pixel graphic still takes up 30 pixels, but looks smaller because there are more pixels being represented on the screen - each one taking up less screen area. |
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The idea is great, but many mix it up with screenresolution. I use a similar effekt with cleartype in windows xp, where you have at the same resolution of 1024 pix a virtual resolution of 3096, because on a LCD you can use the effect that red green and blue are not on the same physical location. Making all images show up bigger is not easy. The modification would mean if you have a 100x100pix image which eg. needs 3inch at 800 need to be 200x200 pix to take the same 3inch at 1600 resolution. |
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supercat: yes, more or less. I can fix a few individual applications to work like this, but not most. |
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holomind: cleartext is a good analogy. In this case, instead of using the RGB subpixels, I'm breaking every 800x600 pixel into 4 1600x1200 pixels. |
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phoenix: by "smaller" I mean that, on the same monitor, the size of the image on the screen is smaller at a higher resolution. This makes icons designed for lower resolutions hard to distinguish. It shouldn't necessarily make them harder to click on, but in my experience it does. Hand-eye coordination thing, I guess. DPI as I understand it is a function of the monitor size and the resolution. (And no, buying a monitor twice the size is not a viable alternative. I don't want a larger desktop, I want sharper fonts.) |
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ravenswood: The only magnifier I've found blows up a small portion of the screen. |
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I think, if I have followed all of this properly, that you are seeking technology, a visual renderer, that can "project" a very sharp "virtual" 800x600 image upon a 1600x1200 display. To effect this, rasterized images are quadrupled (with filtering of some sort) but type and programmatically drawn objects are rendered at the display resolution and scaled to match the size of the quadrupled raster elements. |
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Did I ever mention that the Opera Browser allows 200% of original size on a single click, and up to 2000% total while clicking further...?
Seriously, Adobe After Effects is used on many a film for Opening and Closing Titles - whether for the big screen and/or for DVD/VCR. Sometimes they do one set for Theatrical release, one for retail level, though with the advent of sharper images on large screens for home use, I'd imagine there is one set only of credits, for the most part. |
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I have been saying this for DECADES! |
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What you want is to change what resolution the computer considers "100%" to be. Whatever your screen, the computer currently thinks in 72dpi - so if you have a higher-rez screeen, things don't look crisper, they just look smaller. |
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If screen resolutions would only reach 300dpi, they would become indistinguishable from print. You simply need to scale up the way everything is drawn to match that resolution. |
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The OS that shows the most promise of this is Mac OS X, because its entire windowing layer is based on vectors, rather than pixels. No, really. When it's time to draw, every window pushes through an EPS describing its content. There's no reason this couldn't be drawn at higher (or lower) resolutions. |
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But like most things on the Mac, they're still busy waiting for all the old legacy code to die before they can release the really exciting things. |
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Programs for whom graphics and graphic speed was important, like Photoshop or Illustrator, would still need to be rewritten to take advantage of this, though. |
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I must confess I don't know what you're talking about. But here's what I think you might be talking about. |
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On my XP system which has a (an?) Nvidia GeForce video card thingy, I can set up the pixel resolution that fonts use... eg, I can determine exactly how large 10 pt Arial text will appear on my screen, by setting it against the monitor dpi. I'zis what you mean? |
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Not just fonts: everything. The cursor, of the desktop, of windows, taskbars, menubars, everything. Including the contents of application windows. A double-rez screen would look just like your current screen, only crisper. |
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