6 ms·

Tiny nitpick but the screenshot showing an application window rotated ~45 degrees is a little terrifying. Why would that be allowed?

by warent 8y ago

jstanley 8y ago
Why shouldn't it be allowed?
- mwfunk 8y ago
  Every feature has a cost. Not just cost to develop, but cost to maintain. Every feature has a benefit- how useful is it, for how many users? If the cost outweighs the benefit, then it shouldn’t be allowed, for the sake of keeping the code maintainable and minimally fragile. Portrait orientation for displays isn’t unheard of, but it’s very very uncommon amongst even technical users. I’m sure a bunch of people reading this have all sorts of anecdotal evidence otherwise- congrats, you’re special, and either have very specialized needs or want to cosplay as someone with very specialized needs (usually the latter). But that’s portrait orientation. That’s on the cusp of not meeting the bar for being worthwhile to support, but in general most OSes err on the side of supporting it for certain pro users. Extend that it into arbitrary rotations and you’re dealing with a feature that is way, way more niche than supporting portrait mode, and way more complicated than people might think. All for a feature that has no justification other than, “if it can be done, why not? Might as well right?!?” Now, maybe there are other benefits that I’m not aware of or taking into account, but surely it’s clear why not supporting arbitrary display orientations is at the very least an extremely rational choice from an engineering perspective.
  - im_down_w_otp 8y ago
    I understand what you're getting at here, but it's also possible that this wasn't a directly pursued feature, and may have just naturally fallen out trivially from their display system's architecture & implementation as a by-product. If so, then the cost would be to exclude the capability explicitly.
    - em-bee 8y ago
      exactly, just like it would be rather easy to add to any compositor based system like it's common now on linux.
  - jlg23 8y ago
    > Every feature has a cost. Not just cost to develop, but cost to maintain. A generic implementation that handles any orientation could just be the implementation with lower development and maintenance costs? > surely it’s clear why not supporting arbitrary display orientations is at the very least an extremely rational choice from an engineering perspective. That depends on the engineer. For some it might be easier to consider the special cases (landscape and portrait) first while others don't even want to be bothered with them until optimization time because a generic solution is the more straight forward approach.
reaperducer 8y ago
You assume that everyone has their monitors the way you do. At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me. Currently macOS only allows 90-degree rotation increments. This allows you to have your monitor in portrait orientation, or mounted from the ceiling or a shelf, hanging upside down so there's nothing taking up space on the desk in front of you. I've been in a couple of events in the field where having arbitrary application window rotation would have been nice because there was no place flat to put the monitors.
- GordonS 8y ago
  > At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me. OK... but at 45 degrees?
  - viraptor 8y ago
    To easily change timezone on an analog display clock? ;-)
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    I've been in a couple of events in the field where having arbitrary application window rotation would have been nice because there was no place flat to put the monitors.
  - scrumper 8y ago
    Non-desk applications: vehicle, industrial, marine.
    - tejtm 8y ago
      oooooh, stays steady with the boat pitching/rolling
      - omeid2 8y ago
        You don't want that. With the boat pitching and rolling, so does the people on board looking at the instruments, so having the instrument tilt would be rather disorienting! as if sailing by itself isn't disorienting enough. ;)
zokier 8y ago
It is just a demo of compositor effects; pretty much just a lo-fi version of classic Compiz wobbly windows and rotating cube.
djsumdog 8y ago
IIRC, You could also do this in Squeak (a Smalltalk implementation).
ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
I was an audio visual technician for years, and we had quite regularly requests to stick monitors at weird angles for visual effect. I could have definitely used this feature to do some cool looking stuff.

Tiny nitpick but the screenshot showing an application window rotated ~45 degrees is a little terrifying. Why would that be allowed?

by warent 8y ago

Tiny nitpick but the screenshot showing an application window rotated ~45 degrees is a little terrifying. Why would that be allowed?

jstanley 8y ago

Why shouldn't it be allowed?

mwfunk 8y ago
Every feature has a cost. Not just cost to develop, but cost to maintain. Every feature has a benefit- how useful is it, for how many users? If the cost outweighs the benefit, then it shouldn’t be allowed, for the sake of keeping the code maintainable and minimally fragile. Portrait orientation for displays isn’t unheard of, but it’s very very uncommon amongst even technical users. I’m sure a bunch of people reading this have all sorts of anecdotal evidence otherwise- congrats, you’re special, and either have very specialized needs or want to cosplay as someone with very specialized needs (usually the latter). But that’s portrait orientation. That’s on the cusp of not meeting the bar for being worthwhile to support, but in general most OSes err on the side of supporting it for certain pro users. Extend that it into arbitrary rotations and you’re dealing with a feature that is way, way more niche than supporting portrait mode, and way more complicated than people might think. All for a feature that has no justification other than, “if it can be done, why not? Might as well right?!?” Now, maybe there are other benefits that I’m not aware of or taking into account, but surely it’s clear why not supporting arbitrary display orientations is at the very least an extremely rational choice from an engineering perspective.
- im_down_w_otp 8y ago
  I understand what you're getting at here, but it's also possible that this wasn't a directly pursued feature, and may have just naturally fallen out trivially from their display system's architecture & implementation as a by-product. If so, then the cost would be to exclude the capability explicitly.
  - em-bee 8y ago
    exactly, just like it would be rather easy to add to any compositor based system like it's common now on linux.
- jlg23 8y ago
  > Every feature has a cost. Not just cost to develop, but cost to maintain. A generic implementation that handles any orientation could just be the implementation with lower development and maintenance costs? > surely it’s clear why not supporting arbitrary display orientations is at the very least an extremely rational choice from an engineering perspective. That depends on the engineer. For some it might be easier to consider the special cases (landscape and portrait) first while others don't even want to be bothered with them until optimization time because a generic solution is the more straight forward approach.

reaperducer 8y ago

You assume that everyone has their monitors the way you do. At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me. Currently macOS only allows 90-degree rotation increments. This allows you to have your monitor in portrait orientation, or mounted from the ceiling or a shelf, hanging upside down so there's nothing taking up space on the desk in front of you. I've been in a couple of events in the field where having arbitrary application window rotation would have been nice because there was no place flat to put the monitors.

GordonS 8y ago
> At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me. OK... but at 45 degrees?
- viraptor 8y ago
  To easily change timezone on an analog display clock? ;-)
- reaperducer 8y ago
  I've been in a couple of events in the field where having arbitrary application window rotation would have been nice because there was no place flat to put the monitors.
- scrumper 8y ago
  Non-desk applications: vehicle, industrial, marine.
  - tejtm 8y ago
    oooooh, stays steady with the boat pitching/rolling
    - omeid2 8y ago
      You don't want that. With the boat pitching and rolling, so does the people on board looking at the instruments, so having the instrument tilt would be rather disorienting! as if sailing by itself isn't disorienting enough. ;)

zokier 8y ago

It is just a demo of compositor effects; pretty much just a lo-fi version of classic Compiz wobbly windows and rotating cube.

djsumdog 8y ago

IIRC, You could also do this in Squeak (a Smalltalk implementation).

ObsoleteNerd 8y ago

I was an audio visual technician for years, and we had quite regularly requests to stick monitors at weird angles for visual effect. I could have definitely used this feature to do some cool looking stuff.