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Window Managers for High Resolution Displays?
cfish asks: "Recently, I was told by a manager at a major monitor maker that CRTs are phasing out. I have a very weak eye and I read text at 1024x768 on a 21" monitor, sitting 2 feet away. Each alphabet is about 1/4" tall. What makes me panic is the fact that LCDs have fixed resolution and they are simply too small for me to read icons and widget text, like Microsoft's. This is a great chance for Linux to get a head start in a certain market: older folks and those who have eye strain problems. Generally speaking, not many people can read Microsoft's widget text on a 150dpi display, which may explain why no one buys them even that they are available. Imagine how frustrating it could be for medical display (x-rays), cad, image editing to have a high resolution realistic image but cannot read the menu and text. If someone can come up with a Window manager to beat MS on 200dpi displays, no doubt this will capture a strong following in image related applications. I have read about these debates 5 years ago. What has been done about it?"
Being based on OpenGL, PDF, and making extensive use of TrueType fonts, I was under the impression that Quartz and MacOS X were aptly suited for this sort of use.
IIRC, essentially the entire UI is vector graphics (being done by OpenGL and all), so Apple might have this covered.
Indeed, a 200ppi display would be nice, but not at 21" or smaller sizes.
Assuming you don't want to screw around with font sizes.
Get a 21" LCD that has a native resolution of 1600x1200.
Run it at 800x600. This makes it map each pixel to 4 pixels(2 vertical, 2 horizontal), which will scale perfectly no matter what.
Congrats, you now have a 21" 800x600 monitor.
Sure, you're free to run it at whatever resolution you like. Of course, unlike a CRT, it'll look like shit most of the time, but hey, flat panels are sexy, right, so who cares? To be fair, if your full reolution is an integer multiple of your scaled resultion, then it'll be a bit blocky, but otherwise OK. Personally, I'll be sticking with my CRT for some time yet.
For cfish, my advice is relax. Yes, in time, CRTs will be phased out of the mass market. But they'll still be around for the forseeable future, they'll just be a niche device, so you won't be able to get them from high street shops. Even then, that's still a fair way off...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
My experience is that the early ones are as you describe, but the more recent models (in the last year or so) are much better about this. In fact, the current LCD I have and the previous one were both specified to run at 1280x1024, but I've always run them at 1024x768, and they look great.
--RJ
One problem is that 1024x768 and 1280x1024 are in different proportions, so the images you get will be a little stretched out. To maintain original proportions you will need to find a larger screen with 1400x1050 or 1600x1200 resolution, but they seem to be still unreasonably expensive and rare.
I recently had to give my Dell Inspiron 8200 back to my ex employer, and was quite happy about it for the reason that the display had such a high native resolution. 1600x1200@15". While one can adjust the DPI setting in the display properties box, and the result is ok for most windows software, there are many programmes that have either hard coded widget text (Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop palettes are non standard Win32 controls and therefore remain absolutely tiny, making it very difficult to use the programmes on that display) or have poor absolute size widget layouts or fixed window sizes esuring that the widgets are cut off or not visible (Corel Capture preferences dialog box is one).
For a windows laptop I will in future look for laptops with a much lower native resolution if possible (1400x1000@15" or even lower if the manufacturer has it)
I find X11 based systems to be difficult to configure (but not impossible) but the graphic quality on LCD's always seems to be a bit behind the current generation of Windows or Macintosh OS's. The fonts often seem either rough edged or blurred or both.
The most reasonable quality native resolution LCD displays that I've used are the Apple ones, as Apple seems to have kept the native resolutions lower compared to PC's. The 15" display on my G4 Laptop has a native resolution of 1152x768@15" and is much easier to work with and gives me far less eye strain. I don't know whether Apple does this to cut costs (cheaper than higher resolution displays) or if this is simply good design, but it does offer me more comfort in working on my machine with a (for me) better resolution.