4 ms·

I disagree with Linus on this one. In an ideal world I would agree completely, a better DPI is amazing both in terms of font readability AND for watching full

I disagree with Linus on this one. In an ideal world I would agree completely, a better DPI is amazing both in terms of font readability AND for watching full screen media (movies, TV shows, games, etc). But in the real world higher resolution means small screen elements. At 1600x900 fonts are readable at 125%, at 1920x1080 even at 125% fonts and some elements are literally too small to be comfortable read (you get eye-strain after less than an hour). Now I would turn it up to 150% "text size" but that breaks SO many native Windows applications (e.g. pushing text off the viewable area) and does the same on Linux too (Ubuntu). Ideally everything should remain the same size no matter what the resolution, and the DPI should just grow upwards. This is how it works on platforms like the iPad. So, I disagree with him, I don't want higher resolution displays because Windows, Linux, and OS X still suck at handling resolution (and if you use a non-native resolution it hurts the performance since the GPU has to re-scale constantly). http://i.imgur.com/RqL6v.png http://i.imgur.com/RqL6v.png

Leynos 14y ago
One would hope that if screens of this resolution became ubiquitous, people would start to notice which apps behave poorly and fix them. It might also push forward an ecosystem for supporting such displays. E.g., tools to allow per app dpi settings to isolate badly behaved legacy apps for which the source is not available and on which no active maintenance is done.
lucian1900 14y ago
Most Linux DEs have actually been pretty good at high DPI, and OS X (now) handles it pretty well. Only holdout is desktop Windows.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  I know people who tried Ubuntu on the new Macbook Pros (2880x1800) and everything was so tiny they were literally unable to alter the resolution using the GUI. They could not even click individual elements. They had to manually do it via the shell and even then they weren't able to see what they were doing... I wouldn't call that "pretty good." In fact I would call that shockingly bad. Linux still falls in the trap of re-sizing things to meet the resolution. As you increase the resolution things get small, and as you decrease the resolution things get bigger. This is a broken design. Zooming should have no relationship to resolution. Resolution should increase DPI, not zoom or scaling (or however you wish to word it). A font should be the same size on 1600x900 as it is on 1080p.
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    Last time I tried, KDE measured everything in points and scaled just fine. Unity/Gnome2 might be broken.
exDM69 14y ago
> Now I would turn it up to 150% "text size" but that breaks SO many native Windows applications (e.g. pushing text off the viewable area) and does the same on Linux too (Ubuntu). In the web too. For too many years it was standard to use hard coded font sizes and specifying measurements in pixels in CSS. It's about time web designers start thinking about accessibility and start using flexible font sizes and using em's (unit of length relative to text size) in web designs. Even when it means doing small compromises in the design and you can't make the web site pixel perfect with regards to the photoshopped design mockups.
- zokier 14y ago
  Pixels in web (css) are resolution independent. They are basically defined to be equivalent to a pixel on a desktop 96 PPI display. So using pixels in CSS is fine, if bit confusing. And of course browsers do all sorts of silly things, I can't recall if eg gecko has enabled PPI scaling on default. edit: reference: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-values/#absolute-lengths http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-values/#absolute-lengths
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Huh? That's not entirely accurate and besides, Gecko and Webkit have been doing full page scaling for years and I presume IE is as well.
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  Pixels dimensions and font sizes in CSS are fine because the browser apply a multiplication factor to the CSS values, so that the page and fonts display correctly on a high res screen. This is how Mobile Safari works. The problem with websites is the image files--JPG, GIF, and PNG. The resolution is locked in when the graphic is made, so files made for the the low-res web will look blurry and pixelated when the browser scales them up for a hi-res display.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    > The problem with websites is the image files--JPG, GIF, and PNG. The resolution is locked in when the graphic is made, so files made for the the low-res web will look blurry and pixelated when the browser scales them up for a hi-res display. Such sites aren't blurry in absolute terms, just in relation to sites that have been optimized. That is, they look the same as they would on a standard screen.
rwallace 14y ago
It's true the default text size is too small even with a low-resolution monitor, but I've been dealing with that for years just by selecting a suitable font size within each of the half-dozen or so programs in which I actually read a significant amount of text. I find that works fine.
guard-of-terra 14y ago
So you just want to stop evolution forever. That's just silly. I use a 47" TV with KDE, I set DPI to like 200, and the resulting fonts and interfaces are very nice when viewed from couch. I have to ctrl+ every site a few times, but it works flawlessly after that.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  How does making things smaller and smaller with each resolution increase equal "evolution?" I would argue that making everything a fixed consistent size regardless of resolution and then increasing DPI as the resolution is increased would be a better way to "evolve" things. "Zoom" should be an OS function (e.g. 125%, 150%, 200%, etc). "Resolution" should be hidden from the end user entirely. "DPI" should automatically scale with the supported resolution. That way if the user is hard of seeing they can "zoom" things but aside from that everything would look identical no matter what resolution you had (e.g. identical on 1600x900 or 1080p, or higher).
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    You don't make things smaller. You make things sharper.
    - UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
      Right but you were arguing against that?
      - guard-of-terra 14y ago
        Why? I argued that big resolutions are good and interfaces will soon catch up. Browsers are ready, operating systems are ready. Some legacy software might become tiny, but you can live with it by changing resolution when you need to use it.
        UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
_delirium 14y ago
> a better DPI is amazing ... in terms of font readability I haven't really found this myself: I typically prefer a nice pixel font at a lower DPI than a TrueType font at a higher DPI, especially for coding. The manual effort that goes into a good pixel font just makes for better readability imo.
- mark-r 14y ago
  I suspect that's because you haven't seen high enough DPI yet. The 200+ DPI that Linus calls for is really the bare minimum.
hollerith 14y ago
>Ideally everything should remain the same size no matter what the resolution, and the DPI should just grow upwards. This is how it works on platforms like the iPad. No that's not how it works on the iPad. Apple would not have increased the number of pixels by a factor of exactly 4 in one iPad update if the software gave them the freedom to choose any display resolution.
vvhn 14y ago
>Ideally everything should remain the same size no matter what the resolution, and the DPI should just grow upwards. This is how it works on platforms like the iPad. And on the "Retina" Macbook Pros - i'm not sure why Linus goes batshit over a Apple marketing name, it's a term Apple uses for marketing their HiDPI screens (iPhone, iPad and now Macs) and not in use by anybody else to describe their high resolution screens. The true HiDPI effect is only apparent in the "same size as before but 4 times the pixel density" default configuration. Changing it run on one to one with 2880x1800 display achieves nothing besides really tiny unreadable font sizes.

Leynos 14y ago

One would hope that if screens of this resolution became ubiquitous, people would start to notice which apps behave poorly and fix them. It might also push forward an ecosystem for supporting such displays. E.g., tools to allow per app dpi settings to isolate badly behaved legacy apps for which the source is not available and on which no active maintenance is done.

lucian1900 14y ago

Most Linux DEs have actually been pretty good at high DPI, and OS X (now) handles it pretty well. Only holdout is desktop Windows.

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
I know people who tried Ubuntu on the new Macbook Pros (2880x1800) and everything was so tiny they were literally unable to alter the resolution using the GUI. They could not even click individual elements. They had to manually do it via the shell and even then they weren't able to see what they were doing... I wouldn't call that "pretty good." In fact I would call that shockingly bad. Linux still falls in the trap of re-sizing things to meet the resolution. As you increase the resolution things get small, and as you decrease the resolution things get bigger. This is a broken design. Zooming should have no relationship to resolution. Resolution should increase DPI, not zoom or scaling (or however you wish to word it). A font should be the same size on 1600x900 as it is on 1080p.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  Last time I tried, KDE measured everything in points and scaled just fine. Unity/Gnome2 might be broken.

exDM69 14y ago

> Now I would turn it up to 150% "text size" but that breaks SO many native Windows applications (e.g. pushing text off the viewable area) and does the same on Linux too (Ubuntu). In the web too. For too many years it was standard to use hard coded font sizes and specifying measurements in pixels in CSS. It's about time web designers start thinking about accessibility and start using flexible font sizes and using em's (unit of length relative to text size) in web designs. Even when it means doing small compromises in the design and you can't make the web site pixel perfect with regards to the photoshopped design mockups.

zokier 14y ago
Pixels in web (css) are resolution independent. They are basically defined to be equivalent to a pixel on a desktop 96 PPI display. So using pixels in CSS is fine, if bit confusing. And of course browsers do all sorts of silly things, I can't recall if eg gecko has enabled PPI scaling on default. edit: reference: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-values/#absolute-lengths http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-values/#absolute-lengths
drivebyacct2 14y ago
Huh? That's not entirely accurate and besides, Gecko and Webkit have been doing full page scaling for years and I presume IE is as well.
snowwrestler 14y ago
Pixels dimensions and font sizes in CSS are fine because the browser apply a multiplication factor to the CSS values, so that the page and fonts display correctly on a high res screen. This is how Mobile Safari works. The problem with websites is the image files--JPG, GIF, and PNG. The resolution is locked in when the graphic is made, so files made for the the low-res web will look blurry and pixelated when the browser scales them up for a hi-res display.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > The problem with websites is the image files--JPG, GIF, and PNG. The resolution is locked in when the graphic is made, so files made for the the low-res web will look blurry and pixelated when the browser scales them up for a hi-res display. Such sites aren't blurry in absolute terms, just in relation to sites that have been optimized. That is, they look the same as they would on a standard screen.

rwallace 14y ago

It's true the default text size is too small even with a low-resolution monitor, but I've been dealing with that for years just by selecting a suitable font size within each of the half-dozen or so programs in which I actually read a significant amount of text. I find that works fine.

guard-of-terra 14y ago

So you just want to stop evolution forever. That's just silly. I use a 47" TV with KDE, I set DPI to like 200, and the resulting fonts and interfaces are very nice when viewed from couch. I have to ctrl+ every site a few times, but it works flawlessly after that.

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
How does making things smaller and smaller with each resolution increase equal "evolution?" I would argue that making everything a fixed consistent size regardless of resolution and then increasing DPI as the resolution is increased would be a better way to "evolve" things. "Zoom" should be an OS function (e.g. 125%, 150%, 200%, etc). "Resolution" should be hidden from the end user entirely. "DPI" should automatically scale with the supported resolution. That way if the user is hard of seeing they can "zoom" things but aside from that everything would look identical no matter what resolution you had (e.g. identical on 1600x900 or 1080p, or higher).
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  You don't make things smaller. You make things sharper.
  - UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
    Right but you were arguing against that?
    - guard-of-terra 14y ago
      Why? I argued that big resolutions are good and interfaces will soon catch up. Browsers are ready, operating systems are ready. Some legacy software might become tiny, but you can live with it by changing resolution when you need to use it.
      - UnoriginalGuy 14y ago

_delirium 14y ago

> a better DPI is amazing ... in terms of font readability I haven't really found this myself: I typically prefer a nice pixel font at a lower DPI than a TrueType font at a higher DPI, especially for coding. The manual effort that goes into a good pixel font just makes for better readability imo.

mark-r 14y ago
I suspect that's because you haven't seen high enough DPI yet. The 200+ DPI that Linus calls for is really the bare minimum.

hollerith 14y ago

>Ideally everything should remain the same size no matter what the resolution, and the DPI should just grow upwards. This is how it works on platforms like the iPad. No that's not how it works on the iPad. Apple would not have increased the number of pixels by a factor of exactly 4 in one iPad update if the software gave them the freedom to choose any display resolution.

vvhn 14y ago

>Ideally everything should remain the same size no matter what the resolution, and the DPI should just grow upwards. This is how it works on platforms like the iPad. And on the "Retina" Macbook Pros - i'm not sure why Linus goes batshit over a Apple marketing name, it's a term Apple uses for marketing their HiDPI screens (iPhone, iPad and now Macs) and not in use by anybody else to describe their high resolution screens. The true HiDPI effect is only apparent in the "same size as before but 4 times the pixel density" default configuration. Changing it run on one to one with 2880x1800 display achieves nothing besides really tiny unreadable font sizes.