[geeks] Does size matter

[Erie Patsellis]

IIRC, the Next had display postscript, and it worked the way things are 
supposed to, when you told it you wanted to view larger, it did, then 
again, it's been quite a few years since I've sat in front of one.


erie
Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 12:54:17PM -0400, der Mouse wrote:
>> Note that this is down in the "printer resolution" range, and, surprise
>> surprise, printers are one place where we pretty much _do_ have working
>> resolution independence.
>
> The problem with printers is that they are all speced in dots per inch,
> not pixels per inch. Since a color printer has to print several not quite
> overlapping dots to make one pixel, the information would be usefull, 
> but printer manufacturers don't seem to want to give out that 
> information.
>
> According to many experts, (you can STFW for more information) the 
> "sweet spot" is around 250 pixels per inch from a printer. That's the
> resolution where the most information is processed by the human eye.
>
> It depends upon viewing distance, magnification (if you are wearing 
> glasses,
> etc), and it's not a hard and fast number, I have seen as low as 230 
> and as
> high as 280 ppi.
>
> As for printers, things like dot size, ink spread and the distance 
> between
> the dots all matter, and so do the number of colors, etc. A black printer
> only needs to print one dot per pixel, a cmyb (cyan magenta yellow) 
> printer needs 4, and a 9 color printer needs 9.
> I wonder if you really had display resolution independence, how much 
> processing power you need behind it.
> Geoff.