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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > Can somebody explain the term "resolution Independent?

Can somebody explain the term "resolution Independent?
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Tyre MacAdmin
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Jul 5, 2004, 04:18 AM
 
It seems to be a new catch phrase that is especially tied to NLE's and video editing with HD... Someone in the 'New things I've found in Tiger' thread said that "Resolution Independent UI" was one of the beta features in OS X right now, and I was wondering what it means when applied to the operating system... As applied to a NLE it basically means that you can edit in several different resolutions at the same time... more or less.
     
Chuckit
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Jul 5, 2004, 06:14 AM
 
In this case, it means that the windowing system is based around vector drawing, and isn't tied to a specific resolution. For instance, if you use the Universal Access zoom, you'll find that all the graphics get kind of blocky because it's just drawing bitmaps bigger. In a resolution-independent system, you could theoretically zoom in and it would just transform whole desktop, retaining crystal clarity. Quartz, as a PDF-based engine, has had the groundwork for such a GUI for a while now, but Apple hasn't really taken advantage of it so far. All the controls, window graphics, etc. are bitmaps.
( Last edited by Chuckit; Jul 5, 2004 at 07:29 AM. )
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Tyre MacAdmin  (op)
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Jul 5, 2004, 06:52 AM
 
Ah ha! Vector graphics vs bitmap... that makes perfect sense! I wonder though what benefits this would give besides a more clearly defined desktop...
     
HOMBRESINIESTRO
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Jul 5, 2004, 07:21 AM
 
Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
Ah ha! Vector graphics vs bitmap... that makes perfect sense! I wonder though what benefits this would give besides a more clearly defined desktop...
It is very much needed if you have real big screens. You can have the controls (buttons, menubar etc) in a size that is good for your eyes, and nevertheless have the full resolution of your, say, 30" display!

Today if you want bigger controls, you have to switch to a lower resolution. (Or do I get something wrong here?)
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Chuckit
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Jul 5, 2004, 07:25 AM
 
What he said.
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Tyre MacAdmin  (op)
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Jul 5, 2004, 08:40 AM
 
That's mas killer hombre dude... my eyes suckath over.
     
angelmb
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Jul 5, 2004, 09:43 AM
 
Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
That's mas killer hombre dude... my eyes suckath over.
do you mean that it is a killer feature? :-D

something similar to the colour independent SGI UI ?
     
larkost
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Jul 5, 2004, 10:45 AM
 
A couple of notes:

Resolution independence will really pay of when screen pixel densities start to go up. Right no they are till holding at between 72 and 110 pixels per inch. When they start to climb to 300 or so (digital paper), then resolution independence will pay off. Right now it would mostly be forward thinking... but with a few benefits (screen magnifiers, and simulating lower resolutions on bigger monitors).

Quartz is not a PDF based imaging system. It's predecessor in NeXT was postscript based, but that was scraped to provide hardware graphics acceleration. There is however a nice system that allows foe vector items to travel through some of the inner workings without becoming raster graphics.
     
tooki
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Jul 5, 2004, 01:12 PM
 
Quartz is not a PDF based imaging system
Where have you been?!!?!

Well, you're wrong.

From www.apple.com/macosx/architecture/:
The Quartz 2D high-performance graphics rendering library is the primary imaging model for Mac OS X. Based on the cross-platform Portable Document Format (PDF) standard, Quartz 2D displays and prints high-quality, anti-aliased text and graphics and provides industry-leading support for OpenType, PostScript, and TrueType fonts
From http://developer.apple.com/quartz/:
Quartz's feature-rich drawing engine leverages the Portable Document Format (PDF) drawing model and offers Mac_OS_X applications professional-strength drawing functionality.

From the beginning (other than Mac OS X Server 1.x), OS X has used Display PDF. OS X's native image format is PDF. Any app that can print can generate PDF.

See http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/...s-x-gui-4.html for more info, too.

tooki
     
Landos Mustache
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Jul 5, 2004, 01:29 PM
 
So will 10.4 be fully Resolution Independent?

I think the quicktime player window has been from day one as it scales really well.

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RooneyX
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Jul 5, 2004, 01:48 PM
 
Originally posted by Landos Mustache:
So will 10.4 be fully Resolution Independent?

Not until the bitmaps that fill the vectors are very high DPI. Even if you turn on resolution independent rendering the bitmaps used in the menu and title bars are still very low resolution.
     
tooki
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Jul 5, 2004, 01:57 PM
 
FWIW, Windows' screen zoom feature is vectorized -- buttons, text, etc are all smooth. But bitmaps are scaled up and chunky. So it seems to be resolution independent already.

tooki
     
RooneyX
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Jul 5, 2004, 02:04 PM
 
Originally posted by tooki:
FWIW, Windows' screen zoom feature is vectorized -- buttons, text, etc are all smooth. But bitmaps are scaled up and chunky. So it seems to be resolution independent already.

tooki
True independence would use resolution independent graphics which do exist and are very high DPI. Using screen zoom doesn't keep buttons and text smooth, it blurs them.
     
tooki
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Jul 5, 2004, 02:47 PM
 
The demos I saw in my human interface design class showed Windows using a screen magnifier that did not blur. It must have been a 3rd-party product.

Regardless, that screen zoom had to have access to more than just the final bitmap of the screen.

tooki
     
RooneyX
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Jul 5, 2004, 03:20 PM
 
Originally posted by tooki:
The demos I saw in my human interface design class showed Windows using a screen magnifier that did not blur. It must have been a 3rd-party product.
tooki
Sorry, I thought you mean OSX's windows. Should have spotted the capital W.
     
Judge_Fire
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Jul 5, 2004, 04:10 PM
 
The newer display cards have support for programmable, algorithmic shaders. It could be fun to build themes based around these resolution-independent materials. The water/plastic/glossy/metal etc. themes could easily be done this way, without bitmaps

J
     
RooneyX
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Jul 5, 2004, 05:32 PM
 
Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
The newer display cards have support for programmable, algorithmic shaders. It could be fun to build themes based around these resolution-independent materials. The water/plastic/glossy/metal etc. themes could easily be done this way, without bitmaps

J
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Heady
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Jul 5, 2004, 07:19 PM
 
Originally posted by RooneyX:
Not until the bitmaps that fill the vectors are very high DPI. Even if you turn on resolution independent rendering the bitmaps used in the menu and title bars are still very low resolution.
I don't think I've seen a screenshot of that yet. What does it look like? What kind of control do you have over the interface resolution?

-Heady
     
Superchicken
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Jul 6, 2004, 12:00 AM
 
Actually when I was less nerdy, and OS X.0 came out, and I could make the icons HUGE, I thought that OS X had vector icons. That to me was SOOO COOL. I hope this is one of the first things they make vectorized. But a vector based GUI would be a HUGE filter for me. Better yet, an editable vector based GUI. That said, Apple would then need to design their own vector app, after all I doubt Adobe would want to custom version of Illustrator, nor Macromedia with FreeHand
     
bborofka
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Jul 6, 2004, 12:23 AM
 
I think this is the main reason for a resolution independence, correct me if I'm wrong: So that screen elements are exactly the same size regardless of what screen resolution you are using. Am I right?

This way, you can have the benefits of a high-resolution LCD, without the drawbacks of tiny widgets and text. For example, I setup a lot of new PCs for staff at my University, some of them get nice Dell 1600x1200 20" displays. If I run the OS at the native resolution of the monitor, everything usually looks too small for them and I end up downgrading the resolution, bringing interpolation into effect. A resolution-independent OS would have a static size for screen elements regardless of what resolution you use. So if your eyesight isn't great, you can enjoy the benefits of using the native resolution of your monitor (crisp, clear GUI) without having to down the res. and bring ugly interpolation into effect.

This is the point, right?
     
moki
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Jul 6, 2004, 01:14 AM
 
Originally posted by Superchicken:
Actually when I was less nerdy, and OS X.0 came out, and I could make the icons HUGE, I thought that OS X had vector icons. That to me was SOOO COOL. I hope this is one of the first things they make vectorized. But a vector based GUI would be a HUGE filter for me. Better yet, an editable vector based GUI. That said, Apple would then need to design their own vector app, after all I doubt Adobe would want to custom version of Illustrator, nor Macromedia with FreeHand
I've used computer systems that have vector-based icons (such as Irix). It really isn't that ideal. You have to ride a fine line between something that has enough detail to look good scaled up as well as something that is readable at a smaller size. Then you also have to factor in the rendering time.

A better idea would be to perhaps provide bitmap data that's ideally created for a few reasonable sizes, and then scale that data down to the rendered size. Would it be cool to be able to zoom in indefinitely on any pixel of the screen, and have it rendered smoothly? Perhaps.

But in real world situations, the tradeoffs you'd currently need to make in order to have this happen are probably not worth it. I'm not sure there have been many times that I've wanted to look at a giant glowing "OK" button that fills my entire monitor.
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Tyre MacAdmin  (op)
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Jul 6, 2004, 02:20 AM
 
Originally posted by moki:
I've used computer systems that have vector-based icons (such as Irix). It really isn't that ideal. You have to ride a fine line between something that has enough detail to look good scaled up as well as something that is readable at a smaller size. Then you also have to factor in the rendering time.

A better idea would be to perhaps provide bitmap data that's ideally created for a few reasonable sizes, and then scale that data down to the rendered size. Would it be cool to be able to zoom in indefinitely on any pixel of the screen, and have it rendered smoothly? Perhaps.

But in real world situations, the tradeoffs you'd currently need to make in order to have this happen are probably not worth it. I'm not sure there have been many times that I've wanted to look at a giant glowing "OK" button that fills my entire monitor.
Irix's interface is resolution independant? It looks like another Linux/Unix X windows session to me.
     
moki
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Jul 6, 2004, 02:45 AM
 
Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
Irix's interface is resolution independant? It looks like another Linux/Unix X windows session to me.
The icons that Irix uses are scalable to any size -- they are vector-based (or at least they were, about 6 years ago ). The rest of the interface, I'm not sure of.
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Tyre MacAdmin  (op)
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Jul 6, 2004, 03:26 AM
 
Originally posted by moki:
The icons that Irix uses are scalable to any size -- they are vector-based (or at least they were, about 6 years ago ). The rest of the interface, I'm not sure of.
I like what you can do with Irix but I always thought the interface was non-conductive in a creative environment... SGI needs to work on that. artists need inspiration and the Irix interface just looks mismatched with the beautiful hardware they create.

So you're the president of Ambrosia huh? I'll be buying SnapzPro pretty soon
     
Chris O'Brien
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Jul 6, 2004, 05:38 AM
 
Doesn't Gnome now have vector based icons using SVG?

Anyway. What will this mean for developers? How will you now position elements on a screen? At the moment it's the norm (at least in web dev.) to position elements by pixel values; but with a resolution independent OS, using pixel values could mean different things for all people, couldn't it? Will we have to use cm's and other 'actual' measurement values? That's what's being recommended by Microsoft in reference to their Avalon technology, if I remember correctly...
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moki
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Jul 6, 2004, 05:43 AM
 
Originally posted by Black Book:
Anyway. What will this mean for developers? How will you now position elements on a screen? At the moment it's the norm (at least in web dev.) to position elements by pixel values; but with a resolution independent OS, using pixel values could mean different things for all people, couldn't it? Will we have to use cm's and other 'actual' measurement values? That's what's being recommended by Microsoft in reference to their Avalon technology, if I remember correctly...
As a developer, assuming you don't do a few very avoidable things, your interface will scale up just fine.
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Jul 6, 2004, 07:26 AM
 
Originally posted by moki:
I've used computer systems that have vector-based icons (such as Irix). It really isn't that ideal. You have to ride a fine line between something that has enough detail to look good scaled up as well as something that is readable at a smaller size. Then you also have to factor in the rendering time.
Rendering time I don't see as a problem since the rendered bitmap can be pre-cached. As for making the icon look good at a range of sizes, I don't see why that would be anymore of a problem than with bitmap icons.

I like what you can do with Irix but I always thought the interface was non-conductive in a creative environment... SGI needs to work on that. artists need inspiration and the Irix interface just looks mismatched with the beautiful hardware they create.
The Irix interface is ugly, certainly. But that's more of a graphics design issue than anything else. And TBH if you're working on SGI hardware you'll probably be spending 99% of your time in one big monolithic app so the design of the OS GUI isn't really important (which is why they haven't changed it in many years).
     
Tyre MacAdmin  (op)
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Jul 6, 2004, 08:06 AM
 
The Irix interface is ugly, certainly. But that's more of a graphics design issue than anything else. And TBH if you're working on SGI hardware you'll probably be spending 99% of your time in one big monolithic app so the design of the OS GUI isn't really important (which is why they haven't changed it in many years). [/B]
I agree... I just think it's funny that a company that claims to be a leader in "visualization" should have such an ugly interface... You buy this $20,000 Irix machine.. that looks like a ferrari and then you turn it on to see this piss poor unix interface. They've got to be doing something about it... development somewhere.
     
angelmb
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Jul 6, 2004, 09:07 AM
 
Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
I agree... I just think it's funny that a company that claims to be a leader in "visualization" should have such an ugly interface... You buy this $20,000 Irix machine.. that looks like a ferrari and then you turn it on to see this piss poor unix interface. They've got to be doing something about it... development somewhere.
SGIs looks better that a ferrari, please... is just about tastes, there is not an universal taste that says 'hey, look, it is a ferrari, no one can get better than that'

But, certainly, a better look of their great working UI would be welcomed.
     
Tyre MacAdmin  (op)
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Jul 6, 2004, 09:39 AM
 
Originally posted by angelmb:
SGIs looks better that a ferrari, please... is just about tastes, there is not an universal taste that says 'hey, look, it is a ferrari, no one can get better than that'

But, certainly, a better look of their great working UI would be welcomed.
You obviously have not seen this laptop:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/2757643664353854/

But seriously, if you read the specs on their Terzo worksation it really is rather impressive... it has 4 SCSI i/o channels compared to the one on the G5 and can handle several HD streams at once.

http://www4.discreet.com/smoke/docs/POST1-30-04e.pdf

This is where I 1st saw the term resolution independent..

It really is an impressive machine... until you see the interface... I'd rather work on an os/390 I think.
     
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Jul 6, 2004, 09:57 AM
 
Originally posted by Black Book:
Doesn't Gnome now have vector based icons using SVG?
You can use SVG to create vector-based icond in Gnome, yes. You don't have to do it that way, however; older bitmap formats still work.
Anyway. What will this mean for developers? How will you now position elements on a screen? At the moment it's the norm (at least in web dev.) to position elements by pixel values; but with a resolution independent OS, using pixel values could mean different things for all people, couldn't it?
Actually, you've used an interesting example there. The W3C has defined "pixel" to be "1/90th of an inch" (0.28222222... mm), but allows browsers on a screen resolution that isn't too different from this to use an absolute pixel value instead. Most Mac browsers use 1px=1pixel; only Opera does not. This causes no end of headaches for Web developers, because Opera does not scale images to match this "1px != 1px" measurement, and so all sense of proportion is thrown out of whack.

Ahem. If Apple moves to a resolution-independent UI, a measurement length of 1px will probably be interpreted to mean "1/72 of an inch", which is what Macs have always assumed the screen's resolution to be. This is for historical reasons; the original Macintosh 9' monitor had exactly this resolution, as did the original ImageWriter printer, and in fact 1/72nd of an inch is a popular unit of measure in publishing, making this period in the life of the Mac the first and last time desktop publishers ever actually had true WYSIWYG.
Will we have to use cm's and other 'actual' measurement values? That's what's being recommended by Microsoft in reference to their Avalon technology, if I remember correctly...
This will probably be recommended. Apple is likely to support most common units of measure (inches, centimeters, millimeters, points, and so on). For the record, whatever Apple interprets a "pixel" to mean, a point will remain 1/72 of an inch.

What happens if you need to access the actual pixels on the display? That, I admit, I don't know. Presumably there will be some kind of API for it, but I don't know what form that will take.
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angelmb
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Jul 6, 2004, 01:55 PM
 
Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
You obviously have not seen this laptop:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/2757643664353854/

But seriously, if you read the specs on their Terzo worksation it really is rather impressive... it has 4 SCSI i/o channels compared to the one on the G5 and can handle several HD streams at once.

http://www4.discreet.com/smoke/docs/POST1-30-04e.pdf

This is where I 1st saw the term resolution independent..

It really is an impressive machine... until you see the interface... I'd rather work on an os/390 I think.
LOL, that laptop is really fugly and *********

Tezro looks great and sure works great. IRIX is faster that hell, kinda Mac OS 9 being a 64 bits bullet prof unix, but well, it does need a new face.
     
bmedina
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Jul 7, 2004, 02:38 AM
 
Why do people assume that resolution independence requires vectorized display elements? The graphics that are too low of a resolution will be interpolated, but they will be displayed at the same size on screen as they are today. So even these elements won't look any more pixelated than they are today. You're not going to see big ugly blocks of pixelation, because things aren't going to be blown up on screen.

Today's video games are an example of a resolution independent display engine. The items on screen are the same size whether you play at 640x480 or 1600x1200. And despite all the textures being bitmaps, things don't look more pixelated as you increase the dpi.

The biggest win for higher dpi is in text clarity, and fonts are already vectorized.

Apple could have reasonably implemented a resolution-independent GUI in 10.2 with the advent of Quartz Extreme. Now in 10.4 with Quartz 2D extreme, font rendering is being pushed to the graphics card for a significant increase in speed. This allows the system to draw very high resolution fonts without a big penalty, so now it makes sense to implement this.
     
clarkgoble
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Jul 7, 2004, 03:37 AM
 
What would need to be different in a resolution independent system are all the various widgets like scrollbars and buttons. Right now most of those are bitmaps and you'd just need an API that would ensure they scale right. Most likely you'd want to use vector drawing for a lot of it rather than bitmaps - although that really would vary. I honestly don't think it would be a big difference, considering that real numbers are already used for most drawing rather than integers. Of course perhaps it would cause problems with some carbon apps and applications that move between bitmaps and drawing. So by giving developers fair warning it'll help people make the transition. I think the biggest problem will be in keeping backwards compatibility with applications that implicitly assume you are always drawing at 72 dpi.
     
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Jul 7, 2004, 05:23 AM
 
Right now most LCD displays have a real resolution around 100ppi, Viewsonic's VP2290b has a real resolution of 204ppi as is the IBM IntelliStation T221 monitor. The native resolution of MacOS is 72dpi. On the original Mac a 72 point glyph would be about an inch across. On a 100ppi LCD that same glyph is only about .72 inches across. On one of those Viewsonic or IBM displays I mentioned that glyph will only be .35 inches across. On the same display the Menubar will only be .12 inches tall whereas on a it's about .34 inches tall on a 100ppi LCD.

Resolution independence means the MacOS display will be able to scale for whatever resolution (up to a point) you're driving the display at. We don't run into a problem now with most LCDs because the pixel density is fairly low (~100ppi) but when LCDs like the IBM and Viewsonic ones get a better position in the market resolution independence will be very important in order to keep MacOS usable. No one wants to use a system with a microscopic Menubar or icons that aren't much more than half an inch across at their maximum size.

The scaling will only be true for widgets though, bitmaps won't magically scale by 2x. I think the solution to this will be a larger maximum size for icons and "high resolution" version of Extras.rsrc. In that way the GUI elements will be scalable to larger displays but will work as they normally do on current displays.
     
sambeau
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Jul 7, 2004, 08:24 AM
 
Originally posted by bmedina:
Today's video games are an example of a resolution independent display engine. The items on screen are the same size whether you play at 640x480 or 1600x1200. And despite all the textures being bitmaps, things don't look more pixelated as you increase the dpi.
Is that true? Whenever I increase screen resolution in a game all the menus and options etc shrink.
     
sambeau
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Jul 7, 2004, 08:29 AM
 
OSX 10.0 was originally supposed to have much bigger UI elements as I recall (until all the developers complained that they'd have to rework all their intefaces). I was disappointed that this was dropped as I can barely see the writing on some buttons with my monitor at high res.

Resolution independence is a really sound way to go. Especially if we have fine-grained control over it.

Vectored images with cached bitmaps would sound the best to me - but it would mean having to get all developers to start-from-scratch or face presenting ugly blocky icons. But I guess multi-resolution icons would also.

Could get very ugly for a while
     
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Jul 7, 2004, 09:20 AM
 
Originally posted by bmedina:
Why do people assume that resolution independence requires vectorized display elements? The graphics that are too low of a resolution will be interpolated, but they will be displayed at the same size on screen as they are today. So even these elements won't look any more pixelated than they are today. You're not going to see big ugly blocks of pixelation, because things aren't going to be blown up on screen.
If by pixelated you mean displayed at a dpi lower than that of the display, then without vector based widgets the display will be pixelated (unless the widget bitmaps are made much larger and then scaled down).

Today's video games are an example of a resolution independent display engine. The items on screen are the same size whether you play at 640x480 or 1600x1200. And despite all the textures being bitmaps, things don't look more pixelated as you increase the dpi.
This isn't really true - if you blow the resolution up on a game then the textures will begin to look pixelated - however bilinear (or trilinear) interpolation is used to smooth the effects of this. Even with filtering, the textures will still look smeared and indistinct at high resolutions.

The biggest win for higher dpi is in text clarity, and fonts are already vectorized.

Apple could have reasonably implemented a resolution-independent GUI in 10.2 with the advent of Quartz Extreme. Now in 10.4 with Quartz 2D extreme, font rendering is being pushed to the graphics card for a significant increase in speed. This allows the system to draw very high resolution fonts without a big penalty, so now it makes sense to implement this.
Agreed, this is the primary reason for moving to a higher dpi.
     
moki
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Jul 7, 2004, 09:28 AM
 
Originally posted by sambeau:
Vectored images with cached bitmaps would sound the best to me - but it would mean having to get all developers to start-from-scratch or face presenting ugly blocky icons. But I guess multi-resolution icons would also.
Take a look at the icons in your dock now. Most of them would be difficult to produce as vector artwork that contained few enough paths to render reasonably. Yes, you can cache the bitmaps, but that isn't particularly efficient either, especially when you're talking about drawing a whole lot of icons (such as in the dock or the Finder).

Vector and raster artwork will likely always be around; each offer advantages over the other. Neither is the proper solution to everything. Resolution independence does not require that everything being drawn is vectorized.
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ShotgunEd
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Jul 7, 2004, 10:13 AM
 
Originally posted by moki:
Take a look at the icons in your dock now. Most of them would be difficult to produce as vector artwork that contained few enough paths to render reasonably. Yes, you can cache the bitmaps, but that isn't particularly efficient either, especially when you're talking about drawing a whole lot of icons (such as in the dock or the Finder).

Vector and raster artwork will likely always be around; each offer advantages over the other. Neither is the proper solution to everything. Resolution independence does not require that everything being drawn is vectorized.
Looking across my dock i don't see one icon that would be difficult to draw in freehand.
     
sambeau
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Jul 7, 2004, 10:21 AM
 
By vector art I meant vector art as in PDF - often a mix of vector and raster.

PDF would seem the logical choice for OSX if you ask me..
     
absmiths
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Jul 7, 2004, 10:41 AM
 
Originally posted by ShotgunEd:
Looking across my dock i don't see one icon that would be difficult to draw in freehand.
I think the curx of what he said was "to produce as vector artwork that contained few enough paths to render reasonably". That last part of course is the key.
     
Chris O'Brien
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Jul 7, 2004, 10:47 AM
 
Resizing Scalable Vector Graphics is smooth, even with complex ones, using Adobes SVG viewer. Handled at OS level, I imagine it should be fine (and, I suppose, mean it could truly scale to any size perfectly - within reason).
I, admittedly, have nothing really to base that on, just some pretty limited experience with SVG.
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sambeau
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Jul 7, 2004, 10:51 AM
 
Originally posted by absmiths:
I think the curx of what he said was "to produce as vector artwork that contained few enough paths to render reasonably". That last part of course is the key.
Hence the caching.

You'd only need to do it on setting the monitor to a new resolution (and on starting up a new app to a new resolution)..

Admittedly - redrawing 100s of Apps and all their document icons on changing monitor resolution could be a *real* pain.
     
bmedina
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Jul 7, 2004, 12:53 PM
 
Originally posted by sambeau:
Is that true? Whenever I increase screen resolution in a game all the menus and options etc shrink.
It depends on how the menus are drawn, but I'm really talking about the in-game display. For example, a character on-screen doesn't change size if you switch between 640x480 and 1600x1200.

If by pixelated you mean displayed at a dpi lower than that of the display, then without vector based widgets the display will be pixelated (unless the widget bitmaps are made much larger and then scaled down).
Yes, but again, they'll be displayed at the same size on-screen as they are today. If an image doesn't look pixelated on today's displays, then it won't on a hi-res display using a res-independent GUI. It will probably appear a little blurry compared to vector artwork, but no worse than it is on today's displays.
     
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Jul 7, 2004, 03:17 PM
 
Originally posted by sambeau:
Is that true? Whenever I increase screen resolution in a game all the menus and options etc shrink.
That's just because they didn't make the UI resolution-independent. They could have done that -the rest of the game is usually resolution-independent, so the UI should be able to follow suit- but they didn't.
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qnxde
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Jul 7, 2004, 03:44 PM
 
The frameworks for it are already in place in 10.4 by the looks of it. There us a UI to control it in Quartz Debug. Here's a couple of screenshots:

http://www.purrrr.net/temp/quartzdebug.png
http://www.purrrr.net/temp/applications.png

It's still pretty buggy - changes only affect newly opened apps, hence why I could get multiple apps at different scalefactors (0.5 for text edit up to 1.75 I think for Safari), and there are a lot of display glitches. But clearly, they're working on it

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hyperb0le
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Jul 7, 2004, 03:58 PM
 
Originally posted by qnxde:
The frameworks for it are already in place in 10.4 by the looks of it. There us a UI to control it in Quartz Debug. Here's a couple of screenshots:

http://www.purrrr.net/temp/quartzdebug.png
http://www.purrrr.net/temp/applications.png

It's still pretty buggy - changes only affect newly opened apps, hence why I could get multiple apps at different scalefactors (0.5 for text edit up to 1.75 I think for Safari), and there are a lot of display glitches. But clearly, they're working on it
Cool! Hopefully they will use vectors to draw the widgets though, because currently, it's kind of blurry.
     
protomech
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Jul 8, 2004, 01:10 PM
 
Originally posted by hyperb0le:
Cool! Hopefully they will use vectors to draw the widgets though, because currently, it's kind of blurry.
It's possible that instead they will just use higher resolution art for the widgets and scale down as necessary, much as they do for the dock icons.

Let's hope for SVG-based icons with a high-res artwork fallback :-)
     
clarkgoble
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Jul 9, 2004, 01:39 AM
 
I suspect they'll do what they do for the dock icons and have large pictures and simply scale them. If you cache them it'll work well. Further, those of you who've played with the anti-aliased scaling in Preview.app know that Apple can scale bitmaps *up* very nicely. Far better than I'd have thought. Take a look at that enlarged Safari screen dump. The graphics in the browser scaled up pretty nice.
     
 
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