[geeks] 2 solaris 10 questions

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Wed, 2004-09-29 at 22:25, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 10:02:15PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> > Because it has square pixels.  It's a good compromise for 19-20 inch
> > monitors where 1280x1024 is flat, 1280x960 is not enough, and anything
> > higher than 1400x1050 is too much.
> 
> That's a matter of opinion.  In mine, 19-20" is 1600x1200 territory.

Ah, you are thinking about pixels, and I'm talking about image quality.

I don't mind 1600x1200 pixels on a 19 inch monitor, as long as the image
is clear and the software can make use of it.

What I do mind is low image quality.  I find a lot of monitors that are
iffy at 1600x1200 will do 1400x1050 just fine.  

Of course, lately it seems monitor quality has really degraded.  Brands
that used to be good are disappointing now, and all of them seem to be
cutting too many corners.

My now six year old Sony 400PS (19 inch) looks better than many of the
new 19-20 inch monitors, Sony included.

Years ago Viewsonic, Mag, and Sony were great, but now they seem to be a
lot lower quality than they were.

> There's no reason on earth not to use all the resolution your graphics
> subsystem is capable of rendering stably.  Remember, you can *always*
> make your terminal fonts larger if they're too small at the top
> resolution.  The same on-screen-size characters, rendered in more
> pixels, are cleaner and more readable.

Yeah... if your software does this.  Not many GUI systems do this right
though.

Also, scaling causes artifacts.  Anti-aliasing helps, but the only real
solution is a lot more pixels than we currently use.

Even Apple doesn't have this stuff right yet.

Besides that, terminal fonts are fixed and don't scale.  I currently use
8x16 on my 1400x1050 X display, and I don't really like the fonts that
are available.

Does anyone know of a UNIX/X terminal program that can scale a fixed
font?