[Yochanan]

What is Resolution Independence and Why Should We Care? Can anyone answer that simply?

And when will we see it?

[Brad]

Resolution independence means that objects on your screen can scale up and down properly. This becomes Very Important™ as pixel densities on displays increase.

Computer graphics on systems with an implementation of resolution independence will no longer (generally) be measured in pixels because pixels vary in size from display to display, even today. Instead, we can use more natural and tangible terms like centimeters and inches to describe distances on the screen, just as we do with anything that goes to a printer.

Today, the arrow cursor is 16 pixels tall. What does that mean in terms of "real" size? Nothing! On one display, that 16-pixel arrow may be 2 cm tall; on another display it'll be 0.5 cm tall.

See where this is a problem?

When we have fanciful 200 ppi (or higher!) displays, GUIs that you look at today are going to be fairly worthless because the details will be too small to discern. That 16-pixel arrow will look like nothing but a tiny smudge on the screen. Resolution independence allows the GUI to scale up.

Of course, this doesn't mean simply doubling or tripling pixels. In some cases, yes, bitmaps will have to be scaled in real-time. As you can see with Mac OS X's Dock, though, this isn't too much of a problem. However, much of what you see on the screen is (or can be) driven by infinitely-scalable vectors. Fonts, for example, are vector artwork that can scale up as large as you can imagine; the same is possible with the rest of the interface. One would hope that by 10.5, Apple will either be increasing the resolution of the bitmaps that make up the Aqua interface or (even better) will start using some Quartz 2D magic to actually draw the UI with vectors.

When will we see it? Well, it's a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg game between the display manufacturers and the software developers. Who wants a display at 200 ppi if your software doesn't support it? And vice versa, but less so. Apple is already encouraging developers to make software ready for resolution independence. With the Xcode developer tools, you can toggle this as a feature in Mac OS X 10.4 right now! It's not pretty most of the time, but it does work. As I mentioned before, we can only hope that Apple is pushing this on developers right now so that Mac OS X 10.5 will have solid support for it. It could be delayed until 10.6, though, but nobody really knows.

Oh, and here's a sample image I posted a while ago.

Does that help?

Also, I'm moving this to General Discussion since it's a topic of general technology application.

[Yochanan]

It certainly does help, Brad. I actually expected you to respond before anyone else, so my trap worked perfectly. *laughs deviously*

I had performed a search for "Resolution Independence" just before I posted this, and found that same thread that you provided a link to.

I'm not sure whether it was here or somewhere else (after the search I'll assume it was somewhere else) someone gave a good analogy for RI with the idea of a printed sheet. I've always wondered how I could explain RI to other people so I decided to start a thread to fish out some better explanations than my own.

Thanks for the move to General, Brad.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Yochanan ...someone gave a good analogy for RI with the idea of a printed sheet.

Maybe it was me here?

Originally Posted by Brad Instead, we can use more natural and tangible terms like centimeters and inches to describe distances on the screen, just as we do with anything that goes to a printer.

Anyone who understands RI would immediately be able to draw similarities between the display and the printer. Finally, with RI, we don't care what the output medium is. As far as measurements go, we can treat them all the same.

Computer printing already has RI. When you type up documents in Pages or TextEdit or Word, you don't set margins in pixels; you set them in inches and cm. You don't set font sizes in pixels; you set them in points (1 pt = 1/72 in). When you send a document to print, you generally don't care what the resolution of the printer is. It could be 100 dpi, 300 dpi, or 900 dpi; your document would still come out looking practically the same. The only advantage to have super-high-resolution printers is that you can see more detail in the same amount of space.

Replace the word "printer" with "display" in the above paragraph and you see how this makes perfect sense in application.

Would you believe that HTML+CSS is already "ready" for RI? Most web themselves pages are not ready (because of pandemic stupidity), but it's been possible for a long time to define sizes as inches, centimeters, millimeters, points, picas, and pixels as well as in other relative methods.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Brad One would hope that by 10.5, Apple will either be increasing the resolution of the bitmaps that make up the Aqua interface or (even better) will start using some Quartz 2D magic to actually draw the UI with vectors.

During early Tiger days, a PDF about Tiger mentioned that resolution independence would come with the next major system upgrade, i.e. presumably 10.5.

The PDF gave various guidelines on how to prepare for this. For example, it encouraged starting to use 256x256 icons rather than 128x128, and it asked to replace unnecessarily fixed bitmaps (such as logos, button graphics, etc.) within an application either with higher-quality versions that Quartz then would scale down real-time (as you said, the Dock is a good example of this) or with vector graphics altogether.

On a slightly related note, the WebKit team has started implementing SVG based on KDE's KSVG a few months ago. Once this makes it to the "mainstream" System frameworks, this should provide an excellent vector format to all of OS X.

[julesstoop]

One of the main problems with a resolution independence interface is how to handle ordinary pixel based images. Especially when they are part of the design (or even interface) of for instance a website.

At the present day an image representing - for instance - a push-button, is actually usually a 20 * 20 pixels large jpeg somewhere on the server. On the other hand, the interface widgets used on another website may have already been designed with people with a RI-interface, or may even be vector based images.

As far as I know there is no metadata in use which could describe the properties of this image in such a fashion that the recieving side would 'know' if a particular jpeg should be scaled or not.

[curiousuburb]

Think Raster vs Vector.

Raster is built on a dot grid... size of grid matters because it impacts size and number of dots (hence jaggies at certain resolutions).

Vector scales infinitely with no jaggies (because it's mathematically calculated and independent of the resolution of the device).

Resolution independence will be more vector-like, although it may still technically be raster elements. (cf: fractal compression for a good intermediate compromise between raster info and interpolations at alternative resolutions... mathematically determined, if not quite divided into simple vectors and shaded fillls).

[Brad]

Originally Posted by julesstoop One of the main problems with a resolution independence interface is how to handle ordinary pixel based images. Especially when they are part of the design (or even interface) of for instance a website.

Well, the way Mac OS X handles it is relatively simple. It assumes all "old" graphics were built for 72 dpi and scales everything accordingly.

Here's another image for example. This shows Safari running at 144 dpi in the background and Safari at the default 72 dpi in the foreground.

[julesstoop]

edit: @Brad: yes, I know, it sorta proofs my point. What if the widgets had actually been designed with a higher rez display in mind?


The Unix that ran on SGI-machines already utilized a file manager with real vector based icons around 1995. These icons could basically be scaled up to any size. Each file manager window used to have a sort of scroll thumb/slider to control icon size.
To minimize the number of vectors and thus preserve smooth operation they were of course very simple.

[atomicbartbeans]

So where can we download resolution-independent boobies?

[Dave]

Originally Posted by atomicbartbeans So where can we download resolution-independent boobies?

I often wondered how hard it would be to get photo-realism out of vector graphics. Seems like it'd be scary complicated. I think photos (and therefore boobies) will stay bitmap for a long time.

[curiousuburb]

Unless you're talking about an Escher trick

[julesstoop]

Funny, that site is coming from my university.

[WMD]

I just tried this in 10.4 using Quartz Debug, and rebooting. I have a 1024x768 12" PowerBook, where 96dpi is usually too big for my taste...well, the size upon reboot felt great, but it was very buggy. The desktop icons wouldn't click, the page title wouldn't appear at the top of Safari, some stuff was misaligned, Hardware Monitor refused to launch, and the folder-menu feature of the Dock didn't work. The fonts weren't super great either, but that's probably part of the unfinished-ness of this.

I set it back after a few minutes of exploring. Totally not worth it right now, although, if it's ready come 10.5, I'd like to use it.

[ast3r3x]

What is the difference between true type and post script? As well as true type windows and true type mac?

[Brad]

Originally Posted by ast3r3x What is the difference between true type and post script? As well as true type windows and true type mac?

Google it. The very first result I got explained the difference very clearly with lots of historical and technical details that I'm not going to regurgitate.

What does that have anything to do with RI, though?

[ast3r3x]

Originally Posted by Brad Google it. The very first result I got explained the difference very clearly with lots of historical and technical details that I'm not going to regurgitate. What does that have anything to do with RI, though?

They will continue to be used for resolution independence

Ok, googling worked fine, I did try earlier but webopedia crashed safari.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by ast3r3x They will continue to be used for resolution independence

Which isn't surprising, given that they both were designed to be resolution-independent from the start.

[Chinney]

Interesting thread. This is something that I would have thought would have been solved years ago, but it sounds like it is not so simple. I am looking forward fully scalable everything in 10.5 for my tired old eyes.

Any idea of what Microsoft's intentions are in this area?

[Brad]

I don't think Microsoft has any public intentions to make Windows resolution-independent. At least, I haven't read anything about it.

[scratt]

Originally Posted by Brad I don't think Microsoft has any public intentions to make Windows resolution-independent. At least, I haven't read anything about it.

I guess they are waiting to see what Apple does..

*snikkers*

[rasmits]

Originally Posted by scratt I guess they are waiting to see what Apple does.. *snikkers*

And I guess they'll do it 5 years later, and the world will still be impressed.

Sad but true.

[Moogs]

What do monitor makers have to do to make their screens RI-savvy... anything? If they did have to make big alterations, and MS didn't get behind RI, I can't see why any of the monitor manufacturers would do this. But that's the whole point, right? Making your interface and content look the same on all monitors, because of how the system drives the screen?

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Moogs What do monitor makers have to do to make their screens RI-savvy... anything? If they did have to make big alterations, and MS didn't get behind RI, I can't see why any of the monitor manufacturers would do this. But that's the whole point, right? Making your interface and content look the same on all monitors, because of how the system drives the screen?

I *think* all they have to do is have a higher-than-normal resolution. IBM (I think it was IBM) makes a 200dpi screen for medical imaging that would probably work nicely for showing off resolution independence, but IIRC it's mind-numbingly expensive as far as monitors go. Five digits its price I think.

[Luca]

Dell (and probably other companies) have optional 1920x1200 resolution on 15.4" widescreen displays.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Luca Dell (and probably other companies) have optional 1920x1200 resolution on 15.4" widescreen displays.

I'd hate to try to see anything on that screen!

[Luca]

Windows has pseudo-resolution independence. You can have it scale all the text to be larger and have it use slightly larger versions of some of the UI graphics, but some website text and all normal images will still be very small.

[Mac+]

Originally Posted by Dave I'd hate to try to see anything on that screen!

From my understanding, if the GUI was RI it'd be fine.

[julesstoop]

At this point I would like to reiterate my remarks that the main challenge of creating a useful resolution independant OS doesn't lie in displaying icons, menus, windows and OS-widgets (etc..) but in correctly displaying rich media content, such as websites and thus providing the user of this OS with a useful webbrowser.

The reason for this is simply that there is no way of knowing which screen resolution the creator of the website had in mind when he was designing the widgets, logo's, pictures and other non-vector elements.

[pkatzman]

Originally Posted by Luca Windows has pseudo-resolution independence. You can have it scale all the text to be larger and have it use slightly larger versions of some of the UI graphics, but some website text and all normal images will still be very small.

You can set a Custom DPI setting, but as you said, that only effects the GUI (and not even all programs, it seems!) so websites and such look odd.

I suppose that's what I get for using Windows, isn't it...