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> through NSScreen’s safeAreaInsets How is vague "safety" is better than a simple descriptive rect_below_notch?

by eviks 1y ago

interpol_p 1y ago
Safe area can account for things that are not just a notch. It's used across Apple platforms to indicate anything that might need to occupy a dedicated region on the screen: notch on iPhones, home indicator, iPadOS traffic light buttons, menu bar, curved edges of displays, and so on Your container views can extend the safe areas for their children as well. In our apps, which allow users to run their own custom projects, we increase the safe area for our UI so that users can avoid it in their own rendering Safe area is a fairly neat and functional API. The unfortunate thing is the older `CGDisplayCopyAllDisplayModes` API is just lumping all resolutions together
- eviks 1y ago
  Even then, you can still have something descriptive like unobstructed_area for more general cases. "Safety" is too generic But also you don't need to degrade Mac dev experience for games to tackle ipads the games will not be developed on, aliases exist
  - dkiebd 1y ago
    How is unobstructed area, a term you just made up, better than safe area, a term that has been standard for decades?
    - eviks 1y ago
      That's obvious: the descriptive term is obvious in what it represents on your screen, so has a low cognitive overload for all the new generations of people learning these APIs. Encoding bad practices for decades, on the other hand, just reflects the pains of the old generations.
zerocrates 1y ago
"Safe area" is terminology that has a history of being used with displays: defining the portion of a TV screen where viewers could be reliably expected to be able to see content and on-screen graphics without them getting clipped off by the overscan. I assume they also wanted to choose something that would still be named appropriately if they had other kinds of notches or things in the future (and that even now it already accounts for, say, the curved corners where things also can't display).
- eviks 1y ago
  Since "no-one" knows the history, the design go back to prioritizing the basics of comprehension
  - jama211 1y ago
    Loads of people know it as “safe area”, just because you hadn’t heard it before doesn’t mean it’s not an incredibly common term… I was shocked you hadn’t heard of it. It’s consistent across the industry.
    - eviks 1y ago
      I've heard of that term before, just because you don't have an actual argument there is no need to make up ignorance in others and feign your shock. Also you're also mistaking two different types of knowledge: what the term means and its "TV screen" history. I was explicitly referencing the latter
      - jama211 1y ago
        Are you ok? You’re not making sense my friend.
dagmx 1y ago
Safe area is an industry wide term for the “safe area to display in”. It means that it’s a high probability of being safe to have important content there, not that it is a safe guarantee. Your suggestion here and in the responses would be bucking industry standard terminology for content creation. Your suggestion for unobstructed area is also incorrect because you cannot guarantee it’s unobstructed depending on the display it’s on. Different displays and configurations might have differing levels of overscan causing content to be clipped.
- eviks 1y ago
  Of course it's correct, even Apple says so only using a different synonym unobscured https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsscreen/safeareainsets https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsscreen/sa... > The distances from the screen’s edges at which content isn’t obscured. > because you cannot guarantee That's a condition you've added without justification. Nothing in the term requires it. The term's core benefit is that it's more clarity. Nothing more (in terms of extra guarantees), but nothing less. But also, you can guarantee, read the API docs again: > Content in the safe area is guaranteed to be unobscured Like, > “safe area to display in”. So it's not a "safe area", it's a "potentially a safe area" > bucking industry standard terminology yes, bad standards should be bucked, preferably before they become standards, but the next best time is immediately after that or any time later.
  - dagmx 1y ago
    It’s not a bad standard just because you personally struggle to understand it. Lots of things have historical names, especially in computer graphics, that are now standard. What is an absolute safe area or an unobstructed area in video then to you? How do you guarantee such a thing? Please define one as such that accounts for all display types with appropriate verbiage. I’ll personally advocate for it in the film industry if you can come up with a term that is better than what the entirety of cinematic history has been able to think of. Apple only claim that it’s unobstructed by their specific display edges and overlays but it doesn’t account for other display concerns. Hence safe area is still the most intuitive name. Would you also like to go and argue with people about alpha channels?

> through NSScreen’s safeAreaInsets How is vague "safety" is better than a simple descriptive rect_below_notch?

by eviks 1y ago

> through NSScreen’s safeAreaInsets How is vague "safety" is better than a simple descriptive rect_below_notch?

Safe area can account for things that are not just a notch. It's used across Apple platforms to indicate anything that might need to occupy a dedicated region on the screen: notch on iPhones, home indicator, iPadOS traffic light buttons, menu bar, curved edges of displays, and so on Your container views can extend the safe areas for their children as well. In our apps, which allow users to run their own custom projects, we increase the safe area for our UI so that users can avoid it in their own rendering Safe area is a fairly neat and functional API. The unfortunate thing is the older `CGDisplayCopyAllDisplayModes` API is just lumping all resolutions together

eviks 1y ago
Even then, you can still have something descriptive like unobstructed_area for more general cases. "Safety" is too generic But also you don't need to degrade Mac dev experience for games to tackle ipads the games will not be developed on, aliases exist
- dkiebd 1y ago
  How is unobstructed area, a term you just made up, better than safe area, a term that has been standard for decades?
  - eviks 1y ago
    That's obvious: the descriptive term is obvious in what it represents on your screen, so has a low cognitive overload for all the new generations of people learning these APIs. Encoding bad practices for decades, on the other hand, just reflects the pains of the old generations.

zerocrates 1y ago

"Safe area" is terminology that has a history of being used with displays: defining the portion of a TV screen where viewers could be reliably expected to be able to see content and on-screen graphics without them getting clipped off by the overscan. I assume they also wanted to choose something that would still be named appropriately if they had other kinds of notches or things in the future (and that even now it already accounts for, say, the curved corners where things also can't display).

eviks 1y ago
Since "no-one" knows the history, the design go back to prioritizing the basics of comprehension
- jama211 1y ago
  Loads of people know it as “safe area”, just because you hadn’t heard it before doesn’t mean it’s not an incredibly common term… I was shocked you hadn’t heard of it. It’s consistent across the industry.
  - eviks 1y ago
    I've heard of that term before, just because you don't have an actual argument there is no need to make up ignorance in others and feign your shock. Also you're also mistaking two different types of knowledge: what the term means and its "TV screen" history. I was explicitly referencing the latter
    - jama211 1y ago
      Are you ok? You’re not making sense my friend.

dagmx 1y ago

Safe area is an industry wide term for the “safe area to display in”. It means that it’s a high probability of being safe to have important content there, not that it is a safe guarantee. Your suggestion here and in the responses would be bucking industry standard terminology for content creation. Your suggestion for unobstructed area is also incorrect because you cannot guarantee it’s unobstructed depending on the display it’s on. Different displays and configurations might have differing levels of overscan causing content to be clipped.

eviks 1y ago
Of course it's correct, even Apple says so only using a different synonym unobscured https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsscreen/safeareainsets https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsscreen/sa... > The distances from the screen’s edges at which content isn’t obscured. > because you cannot guarantee That's a condition you've added without justification. Nothing in the term requires it. The term's core benefit is that it's more clarity. Nothing more (in terms of extra guarantees), but nothing less. But also, you can guarantee, read the API docs again: > Content in the safe area is guaranteed to be unobscured Like, > “safe area to display in”. So it's not a "safe area", it's a "potentially a safe area" > bucking industry standard terminology yes, bad standards should be bucked, preferably before they become standards, but the next best time is immediately after that or any time later.
- dagmx 1y ago
  It’s not a bad standard just because you personally struggle to understand it. Lots of things have historical names, especially in computer graphics, that are now standard. What is an absolute safe area or an unobstructed area in video then to you? How do you guarantee such a thing? Please define one as such that accounts for all display types with appropriate verbiage. I’ll personally advocate for it in the film industry if you can come up with a term that is better than what the entirety of cinematic history has been able to think of. Apple only claim that it’s unobstructed by their specific display edges and overlays but it doesn’t account for other display concerns. Hence safe area is still the most intuitive name. Would you also like to go and argue with people about alpha channels?