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[REBOL] Real world measurements - a suggestion.

From: greg::schofield::iinet::net::au at: 12-Aug-2007 18:21

Many years ago Apple made possible desktop Publishing by producing screens that were 72 dots per inch and a dot matrix printer that had the same reolution. 72 dots per inch = one "point" per inch the basic measurement in typesetting. At the moment dialogs and much else is measured and manipulated in pixels. How this displays varies enormously. HDTV standards give a set of relationships in terms of aspect ratio (16:9) and resolution (1920x1200). Of course the actual size of the monitor can vary enormously. If instead of pixels, actual measurements were used (millimeters), it would be scale that would determine the actual size of anything on screen. The effect of this is that GUIs and other graphical devices is that they would better fit a number of different monitors and resolutions. It also suggests different GUIs being made for Wide and 4:3 screens, and mini-screens (which could be defined as a fraction of the virtual screen). The recipe would thus be not pixels, but a HDTV at 1080p displaying a single A4 page in a 1:1 ratio being the virtual measuring system. 5mm on such an imaginary setup being 5mm in reality, then scaled up or down according to the device being used. In terms of bit maps, it would mean that each bitmap had a natural measurement - that is a 1:1 pixel to pixel display would be converted to a measure as against the virtual screen. The virtue is that given a calculation of the particular monitor being used, a common scale percent could be determined for best fit of vector and bitmaps. Just a suggestion and no-doubt too difficult to implement at this stage. Greg Schofield Perth Australia