High resolution screens are great for typography - Re: Accelerator boards - no future? Bad business?

[Toby Thain]

On 2016-04-25 8:15 PM, Swift Griggs wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Apr 2016, Toby Thain wrote:
>> Incorrect.  Scalable system (& third party) fonts have been with us for
>> more than 30 years, as I said.
>
> Though you are quite correct, it doesn't mean that scalable fonts are
> everywhere.  They might be present more or less everywhere in MacOS and
> maybe even Windows, too.  However, there are two problems.  One is that it's

"Maybe" even Windows? Microsoft was a partner in developing TrueType... 
You couldn't use Windows in graphic arts without this feature.

& Linux has had Freetype for a long time (also with subpixel rendering).

> (currently) a big hassle in Windows to get absolutely every font to get
> bigger at once.  Trust me, I tried.  For example, you might make the title
> bar bigger, but the text underneath button icons might be immutable (and
> thus microscopic).  I expect this will change in the future as folks adopt
> Apple's solution where they can sort of interpolate (maybe that's the wrong
> term in this case) the view of what you are seeing.  I'm guessing you know
> what I mean.  If that happens, I might decide I *love* high res screens.
> What you are saying is fundamentally sound, ie..  more pixels mean more
> detail and readability.  It's just the current state of the art that's no
> fun.
>
> My other (personal) issue is that I use a lot of oddball operating systems
> that don't have and will never have good support for scalable fonts which

Then again, some "oddball" operating systems have excellent support for 
scalable fonts and anti-aliasing. Embedded user interfaces often need it 
just as much as desktops.

> can easily be adapted for ultra-high-res.  So, I just stick with old
> monitors and specialty stuff (like the Samsung 210T).
>
>> OS X 10.3 shipped with subpixel rendering on LCD as has Windows Cleartype
>> for many years.
>
> Which is, I agree, great for readability.  Now if there was just a universal
> one-stop place to double my font sizes in every OS (or even the same OS)...
> :-)

Control +   or   Command +   :-)

[also Chrome has a default window zoom. I find this setting for me has 
crept up a little in recent years :]

--Toby


>
> -Swift
>