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#26 2013-05-10 17:40:46

SquidGuy
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

On a 15.6ish screen, can you physically see the difference once you reach above 2880x1800?  At this level I'd assume it to be similar to having 300fps vs 220fps from video, where the hardware exceeds your ability to notice the difference.

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#27 2013-05-10 17:43:29

theGunslinger
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

Awebb wrote:
anonymous_user wrote:

Or is it better to stay with 1366*768 and just rely on decreasing fonts sizes and changing DPI?

theGunslinger obviously never had the chance to compare the quality first hand. i was also very sceptic at first.

Actually I did, my sister bought a tablet with a pixel density much higher than that slight upgrade anon was talking about.

Is it pretty? Yes.
Will it change anything in my workflow. No.

Progress should come ofcourse (1366 has been king long enough) even in the form of aesthetics and I'm all for it.

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#28 2013-05-10 19:04:43

nomorewindows
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

I remember when 1024x768 was moving up in the world with win 3.1, but now it's all I can get out of a 720p TV set.  There's always the option nowadays to get more resolution out of an external monitor if your card supports it.  Then the added benefit of dual screens, but it would have to be more than the resolution on the laptop and more than 1024x768 to be useful.


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#29 2013-05-10 19:29:00

zezhyrule3
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

I just came across this post, maybe it's relevant!

https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/ … DMUKQw3Lif


- dots -

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#30 2013-05-10 23:30:21

litemotiv
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

jakobcreutzfeldt wrote:

My laptop's 1920x1080 resolution makes me go "ooh, nice". I have basically the same vertical space as that 1280x1024 screen pictured (ok a  few more pixels) but with the wider horizontal dimension, I can easily split the screen and have windows side-by-side. I don't see what all the fuss is about.

You have about the same vertical pixels, not space, unless you have a 17" inch laptop. Since screen sizes are measured diagonally, when the screen gets wider the height decreases progressively. The fuss is here:

15uTE.png

With a wider aspect ratio you lose more vertical space than you gain horizontal space, apart from the fact that horizontal space is less important for most use cases. Just think lines of code for instance.

Pixel density is another matter, the more the merrier!

Awebb wrote:

The strongest pro-widescreen argument: Your field of view is significantly wider than it is high.

Field of view yes, but most of that is peripheral and not that relevant if you want to be 'productive'. Movies in cinemas are 21:9, and still when you chop off 25% of both sides and view them on an old 4:3 television, they're still perfectly watchable. Now chop off 25% of the top and bottom and you have a much less pleasant viewing experience...


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#31 2013-05-10 23:43:55

Trilby
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

Something is really wrong with that schematic.  The dark black "roundish" line ... is that supposed to be a 9.7" radius circle?  If so, why is it INSIDE the base of a rectanle with a 9.7" diagonal?  Am I missing something, or is this the visual correlary to "how to lie with statistics" - "how to lie with schematics".


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#32 2013-05-10 23:59:55

Xyne
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

Trilby wrote:

or is this the visual correlary to "how to lie with statistics" - "how to lie with schematics".

lies, damned lies, and mspaint

the schematic is definitely off (even if the argument still holds)


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#33 2013-05-11 03:01:47

ConnorBehan
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

anonymous_user wrote:

Ok I got your point. So in your opinion, is getting a high resolution displays on a laptop ever worth it? 1920x1080? 2560x1700? 2880x1800? 4096x2160?

Can video cards even handle that last one? 4K equipment cost big bucks last time I checked.


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#34 2013-05-11 03:27:24

anonymous_user
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

I didn't mention 4K as a realistic answer, I was just wondering theGunslinger's opinion of high resolutions.

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#35 2013-05-11 04:50:32

SquidGuy
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

So, if I'm understanding this correctly: assume that we have an even 17" diagonal on both screens just for the sake of discussion.

On a 4:3 Your viewing area is 13.6 in(w) x 10.2 in(h) so total viewing area is 138.72 sq in.  On a 16:9 Your viewing area is 14.8 in(w) x 8.3 in(h) and total viewing area is 122.84 sq in.
13.6**2 + 10.2**2 ~= 17**2 : 14.8**2 + 8.3**2 ~= 17**2 just to see how much the math is off on the exact measurements, but it's relativly accurate.  So, with an equal diagonal measurement, the 16:9 display is 88.55% (did some rouding here too, because anything beyond .01" is irrelevent in this case) of the total display area of a 4:3 screen.

The diagram is perhaps off, but the point is totally valid.

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#36 2013-05-11 07:51:31

HalosGhost
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

If we're all going to be sciency on this one. Technically, the sampling rate theorem would require screen DPI to be at least 1024 for the human eye to be incapable of discerning the difference between a physical object and the representation of that object on a screen (Relevant Reading). Relevant quote: "We're gonna need a bigger [GPU]!"

Thus, I shalln't be satisfied until we have 16:10 (or 16:9) ratio screen dimensions with 1024 DPI (perfect screen size for me is ~27" diagonal).

All the best,

-HG

Last edited by HalosGhost (2013-05-11 07:52:32)

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#37 2013-05-11 07:59:19

Awebb
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

I don't want to see 4:3 screens go away as well, but the discussion lacks substance. It is not enough to convince anyone, that 16:9 is less productive than 4:3. I once have been told on an Ubuntu board, that there are some people, who do real work with their computers, so they need a 4:3 display. He never really told me, what this real work of his is.

litemotiv wrote:
Awebb wrote:

The strongest pro-widescreen argument: Your field of view is significantly wider than it is high.

Field of view yes, but most of that is peripheral and not that relevant if you want to be 'productive'. Movies in cinemas are 21:9, and still when you chop off 25% of both sides and view them on an old 4:3 television, they're still perfectly watchable. Now chop off 25% of the top and bottom and you have a much less pleasant viewing experience...

As a movie lover, I have to tell you, that you are a barbarian. Chopped off widescreen. Perfectly watchable... :-D

Whatever. On a widescreen, I usually have a layout like this:

220px-Scrotwm.png

The code is on the left, output (upper) and an extra shell for random activity (lower) on the right. I had it like this in the past as well, before I started to use widescreen. It was just flipped by 90°, with the auxilliary shells on the bottom.

This entire discussion is based on the following axioms:
1. As text is best read in short lines and long rows.
2. In a rectangle of the dimensions a*b and a constant diagonal c, the larger the difference between a and b is, the smaller will be the area.

We also have found out, that with growing size and resoultion and physical number of the screens, the problem becomes irrelevant, as there will be enough space for whatever task you have at hand. So we are only focusing on small screens, like laptops, netbooks, tablets and interfaces of embedded devices.

The premises here, however, are:
1. On a widescreen display, you cannot work well with text, because you have less vertical space, than in a 4:3 display.
2. It is, that 1. is bad, because with widescreen, you get less area per inch diagonal.

The conclusio is 4:3>16:9. I am missing premisses to come from the axioms to the conclusio. There is too much emotional intereference. Let's see:

Bars, bars, bars. Interface designers seem to love cascades of horizontal bars and ribbons, wasting horizontal space, making it gradually impossible to use the interface, without missing the important stuff. But we already figured out, that interfaces can be adjusted. It just seems, that most designers still work with 4:3 screens, where all those bars are perfectly fine, because there is still enough space in the vertical.

It's hard to go on from this point. Besides working with text, I cannot really think about a task that is done on a small screen. It's either text or something more graphical like the GIMP, which is so customizable, that it won't matter in the end. I always come to the conclusion, that having a small screen sucks. I would also agree, that with a smaller screen, working with text is better with a 4:3 screen.

This is all very limited. This is certainly not enough to convince an entire industry. There is too much subjective "I do not get as much work done on a widescreen" influence. Besides all graphs and calculations, this is not scientific enough to NOT pull in the trolls. This isn't even an argument between the 4:3 lovers and the widescreen lovers. It's between the 4:3 lovers and the "I do not care but I am tired of reading about this" population.

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#38 2013-05-11 08:39:41

theGunslinger
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

Awebb, the discussion was started about laptop screens which will never change it's size. PC monitors are already big not to have this discussion. As a movie lover, you surely don't watch them on your laptop screen?

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#39 2013-05-11 08:53:00

SquidGuy
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Posts: 47

Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

Awebb wrote:

2. In a rectangle of the dimensions a*b and a constant diagonal c, the larger the difference between a and b is, the smaller will be the area.

Pretty much an undenyable fact, and still it gets us nowhere in the long run.  We still need to be able to clearly define "productive" to actually make any of this objective in regards to the fact that it is better to have more total space than horzontal space.  Unless we can use the line, "per the Ubuntu guy who knows about what 'productive' means."

HalosGhost wrote:

Thus, I shalln't be satisfied until we have 16:10 (or 16:9) ratio screen dimensions with 1024 DPI (perfect screen size for me is ~27" diagonal).

Now, I can get behind this (the 16:10 one, preferably...more total screen real-estate).  We have objective evidence that this is the only possible way to truly make everyone happy, if only I could figure out the "how..?"

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#40 2013-05-11 10:03:05

litemotiv
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

16:10 is an interesting compromise, since it's closest to the golden ratio, potentially making it a ratio that feels more natural to the viewer (i personally think it's much more pleasant to look at than 16:9, which feels too wide for it's height). In the end, life is all about ratios!

3359403847042064619.jpeg

@Awebb, it's really quite simple: i'm programming and i need a portable laptop.  I'm only using DWM with fullscreen windows so menus and status bars are not relevant. Now, when i buy a 16:9 Thinkpad i will permanently have about 11% less vertical space (and thus less lines of text on screen) than if i buy a 16:10 Macbook for roughly the same price. 5 lines more code means a better overview, less scrolling, and less time wasted navigating. And obviously with 3:2, 4:3 or 5:4 this difference is even greater.

When coding/text/reading are the most important things i do on my laptop, then it's absolutely going to be an important factor in my buying decision. The fact that the 16:9 screen gives me about 4% more screen width seems a lot more trivial, what am i going to do with that space? For this reason it's completely ridiculous that Lenovo switched to 16:9 screens, since for 'business usage' there are hardly any scenarios thinkable where that extra horizontal space can be used 'productively'.

Let try again with another diagram:

16-9v16-10.png

Conclusion: 16:9 is an abomination and there is not a single good reason to put it on a professional laptop, people are getting played and ripped off and i refuse to buy anything 16:9.

(i can go on about this endlessly wink)


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#41 2013-05-11 10:28:00

HalosGhost
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

I'm with litemotiv. I greatly prefer 16:10. But seriously, font size and all that junk won't really matter once we hit 1024+ DPI. Fonts, even without smoothing will be essentially undifferentiable from printed text.

The next argument to have is about true sub-pixeling (straight-up RGB ftw) and OLED vs. LCD. At the moment, LCD looks much prettier (partially because of its true sub-pixeling, and partially because LEDs don't seem to be ready yet to function quite as well as LCD). However, because OLED can be taken advantage of to use far less power in operation (see: no more backlights necessary), I hope that they catch up in quality soon; I would adore having a nice [16:10] 27" (15.6" for a laptop; 4.6" for a mobile device) true sub-pixeled OLED display tongue

All the best,

-HG

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#42 2013-05-11 11:22:48

Trilby
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

I also spend most of my time on my laptop looking at code of one sort or another (C, R, LaTeX).

But I do like having two side-by-side views to compare results, or have a statistical anlaysis on one side and a LaTeX document writing up those results on the other, or a man page one one side and C code on the other ...  But each of these side-by-side terminals should be at least 80 columns.  Unless I use a ridiculously small font, two 80-column terminals is hard to acheive on narrower screens.  On my Lenovo S10-3, I just squeeze it in, and that is a a "wider" aspect ratio.

Not everybody wants two side by side terminals though - and that's the point: we use our computers differently, so what we want out of our monitors will be different.  Any claims to what is objectively best for working on a computer is just nonsense.  Sure there can be scientific studies - but every study has to start by making assumptions.  In this case, those assumptions about how the computer will be used are often wrong.


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#43 2013-05-11 11:36:17

litemotiv
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

@Trilby: that argument is only valid if the extra 4% horizontal space you gain with 16:9 is just the extra amount of screen estate you need to place two windows side by side comfortably.


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#44 2013-05-11 11:42:19

Trilby
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

Actually it has been on a few occasions.  I prefer the terminus font, and I don't recall if 10px is the smallest size available, or if it is the smallest size I've found remotely readable - but on a few monitors I've been just short of being able to have two 80-column terminals with terminus 10px (78+78, or 80+76, either way at least one gets squashed).

I do agree that more vertical space is always handy, but I've simply never been in the situation where I've been up against the minimum number of rows that some tools expect to have visible.  Of course this is because I use a side-by-side layout, I would have the opposite issue with over-under layouts, but these have never been to my liking regardless of screen geometry.

If I did loose 4% of horizontal space from my lenovo, I would not be able to have two 80-column terminals.

Last edited by Trilby (2013-05-11 11:43:57)


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#45 2013-05-11 12:11:31

theGunslinger
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

Well that's a pretty specific problem you have there, not willing to lose another pixel in font size, not willing to try a different font but you're fine with losing lines on the screen permanently just because of LaTeX. C and R won't mind 78 columns.

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#46 2013-05-11 12:13:52

Trilby
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

Yes it is pretty specific - I made no claim that my tastes would suit everyone.  That's my point though, everyone's tastes differ and any allegedly objective assessment of something that has to start by making strict assumptions about the user's preferences is not objective at all.

"Salsesman: Here's how you can get what you want.  Customer: but that's not what I want.  Salesmen: well, then you're just wrong, you should want this, now buy it."

Last edited by Trilby (2013-05-11 12:15:36)


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#47 2013-05-11 12:40:18

litemotiv
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

@Trilby, i find your logic a bit flawed. Yes, in the end "everything is subjective", but it is an objective fact how much vertical space you lose and how much horizontal space you gain. You have a very specific use case for the extra horizontal width, but that also cannot be extrapolated to a general rule -- or it would be just as logical to fabricate circular screens instead, i'm sure there's someone somewhere with a very specific use for those.

It would seem obvious (to me) that the extra 10% vertical space is useful for much more usage scenario's.


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#48 2013-05-11 13:07:51

Awebb
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

Now that's specific, litemotiv. A single window, fullscreen on a relatively small screen. This is at least a basis for understanding, what productive means in that case. Hard to deny, 4:3 would be best for that. I'd also need more vertical space, as productive used to mean "look at A4 pdf files", which is a horror on small sized widescreen displays that cannot be rotated.

Unless something new comes up, I will place this final statement: Displays should be available not only in different sizes, but also in different ratios. I want widescreen for some things and something more compact for other things. I will from now on support the widescreen-sucks movement, as I feel like I should oppose the one-size-fits-all mentality of the industry.

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#49 2013-05-11 13:13:09

jakobcreutzfeldt
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Registered: 2011-05-12
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

litemotiv wrote:

You have about the same vertical pixels, not space, unless you have a 17" inch laptop. Since screen sizes are measured diagonally, when the screen gets wider the height decreases progressively. The fuss is here:

But in my mind, when it comes to looking at a screen, pixel count == space.  Since I have a higher vertical pixel count on my widescreen than you do on your 4:3, I still have more space in my mind. I can fit maybe another line of code in those extra pixels more than what you have (depending on dpi settings blah blah blah), and I have a hell of a lot more horizontal space (pixels), even if the physical dimensions are not as advantageous.  I couldn't care less about the physical dimensions (unless we're getting down to something really small like in the 10" range), as long as I have such pixel counts.

[subjective]All I know is that, for my workflow, going from a 1024x768 15" laptop to a 1920x1068 17" laptop has been a great boon (like Trillby, I like to have windows open side-by-side). I could never find an efficient window layout before. Now it's no problem. [/subjective]

Last edited by jakobcreutzfeldt (2013-05-11 13:13:46)

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#50 2013-05-11 13:52:01

litemotiv
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Re: [Solved] ooh, nice, an off-topic conversation about pixels

Awebb wrote:

Now that's specific, litemotiv. A single window, fullscreen on a relatively small screen.

I like to think of it as the most Platonic abstraction of computer interaction: reading and writing text on a screen. So perhaps actually the opposite of specific? wink Most OS'es now seem to move back to that paradigm though, single tasks fullscreen...

Unless something new comes up, I will place this final statement: Displays should be available not only in different sizes, but also in different ratios. I want widescreen for some things and something more compact for other things. I will from now on support the widescreen-sucks movement, as I feel like I should oppose the one-size-fits-all mentality of the industry.

A rotating laptop screen sounds like a great idea!

how-to-rotate-screen.png

jakobcreutzfeldt wrote:

But in my mind, when it comes to looking at a screen, pixel count == space.  Since I have a higher vertical pixel count on my widescreen than you do on your 4:3, I still have more space in my mind. I can fit maybe another line of code in those extra pixels more than what you have (depending on dpi settings blah blah blah), and I have a hell of a lot more horizontal space (pixels), even if the physical dimensions are not as advantageous.  I couldn't care less about the physical dimensions (unless we're getting down to something really small like in the 10" range), as long as I have such pixel counts.

[subjective]All I know is that, for my workflow, going from a 1024x768 15" laptop to a 1920x1068 17" laptop has been a great boon (like Trillby, I like to have windows open side-by-side). I could never find an efficient window layout before. Now it's no problem. [/subjective]

Yes 17" laptops are definitely different, they are comparable to desktop monitors and large enough to fit two large windows side by side. I used a 16.4" laptop for a while and i found the screen just a tad too small for that (at least for longer periods of work).


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