Actual size does not display as actual size

Whether the screen size is detectable or not by the OS, it would be a simple matter to have a display setting in the OS where the user could enter the screen size. 100% could be made to be 100% without all that much effort. For iMacs and laptops, the main screen size is already known but a secondary screen might require manual input.

phrankxm wrote:
However, it does appear that my desktop Dell, working with a 17" LCD (not the original monitor) gives a display where actual/100% is 100%. However, my Dell laptop PC is only close (I previously thought it was 100%). It is about 95% on close inspection.

Ok, I walked across the room and took out a four year old Sony Vaio with Windows XP from the cupboard. It does not have MS Word, but it has Adobe Reader and OpenOffice. Those two applications both agree that 100% of an A4 on the built in screen is about 60% of a real paper A4.

On the other hand, I may be only one of a few people that has a use for actual size displays.

Are you sure you really have much use for it, considering that you had not even noticed that your own laptop was wrong?

Of course there are a lot of things that computer manufacturers could improve in this area, if they feel like it, but to my knowledge no one today claims to render real life at 100%.

As far as I know, as I work most of the time with a PowerMac, the machine is unaware of the physical size of the connected device.
It knows only the fact that it displays 1920 x 1200 pixels.



The problem may be different with machines with integrated display.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 3 septembre 2009 20:43:50

This problem is now historic that we have flat screens, but on earlier Windows CRT PCs they famously didn't even have square pixels, scrunching up the display in either the vertical or horizontal.

Peter

phrankxm wrote:
Ok - I concur with most comments. But especially the fact that it would be a simple matter to input the data necessary to do the calculation and make it right.

One could invest time and resources trying to make it right in more cases than today. However, modern operating system are slowly (very slowly) moving away from a pixel based display and to resolution independence. It seems trickier than people at first thought, as it still is not fully working in Mac OS. I do not know how many Windows applications are built to support it.

Anyhow, instead of investing a lot in a decent pixel based solution, I suppose the OS manufacturers aim for a future solution that is resolution independent.

(I tried in MS Word on another laptop. 100% was far off on that one as well. I have so far seen no Microsoft machine where it works.)

Magnus

I can foresee problems where pixel based images are mixed in with vector and the vector freely changes scale but the pixel images don't and therefore appear to dramatically shrink or are instead crudely extrapolated.

I think you have to face the fact that small bitmap UI images are rendered very quickly whereas making the system jump through several rendering hoops to display screen layouts will cause a major speed hit as it did when NEXT first attempted Display Postscript.

Peter

PeterBreis0807 wrote:
Magnus
I think you have to face the fact that small bitmap UI images are rendered very quickly whereas making the system jump through several rendering hoops to display screen layouts will cause a major speed hit as it did when NEXT first attempted Display Postscript.

From my point of view, it's why Numbers is so slow.
It seems that it redraw the entire table's bitmap represetation when something changes.
It's absolutely foolish, recalculate the visible area would be sufficient.
It's what the coelacanthus named AppleWorks does!

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 4 septembre 2009 21:50:17

Years ago, I found a setting in Windows (may have been 98 or 2000 or even NT - it wasn't ME) that allowed you to set your ruler size for all of Windows (I think). Basically, I held a ruler up to the screen and made the ruler on the screen match it. That set your rulers across anything that used a ruler. As I recall, it worked really well. I haven't thought of it in years, when I was trying to fix the real page size for my home computer just now. I am really surprised that I couldn't do it - you would think since Macs have a history of being graphic design heavy that things like that would "just work."

PeterBreis0807 wrote:
But then AppleWorks was a work of genius, well before its time. 🙂

That's true!

That's why they had to kill it off.

That's ridiculous.

Appletried to revive AppleWorks when they grab it from Claris.
Alas, affter years of patches upon patches upon patches, the source was quite incomprehensive.
Each time they tried to correct a bug they introduced an other one.
More: the basis where completely disconnected of the requirements of a modern system.
The only soluce was to rebuild something from scratch.
Building separate programs was fine because it gave the ability to spread the development on a long period but gave also the ability to deliver something to customers.

With Pages & Numbers I'm now able to do all what I did with AppleWorks (minus database) but the app works slowly.

I really don't understand why they continue to build the bitmap for the entire tables but maybe there is a system requirement which I missed.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 5 septembre 2009 11:12:25

The programmers who wrote AppleWorks were poached by Microsoft.

Twice.

That's why Apple gave up.

Still, they could have rewarded their employees sufficiently to keep them. One reward would have been to see their work given the support it deserved. Not something many Apple employees ever got.

I have a museum of software that had been given Apple's famous five minute attention span, that revealed each revolutionary effort with huge hyped up splash, before neglecting it.

Anyway time to move on:

http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewtopic.php?t=56&mforum=iworktipsn trick

Peter

PeterBreis0807 wrote:
The programmers who wrote AppleWorks were poached by Microsoft.

Twice.

That's why Apple gave up.

It's a biased analysis.

Read the story of ClarisWorks at:

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/bob/clarisworks.php

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 5 septembre 2009 12:37:15

Interesting for the detail, but it doesn't contradict what I wrote.

btw I think Microsoft's actions in any free country with a non-compromised judiciary and executive would have lead to prosecution for monopolistic and predatory practices.

A pity the EEC did not have an interest in AppleWorks.

Peter

Really? In what program?

And when you change displays which have physically different size pixels, how does it know this?

Peter

Could it be that Windows needs you to tell it what resolution to use therefore it will know what to set it to?