On resolution independence

If Mac allows you directly install Windows on your Mac, and then you get a virus, and it infects OS X, don't you think Mac is going to lose some of that credibility of being "virus-free?" That's why I think they'll leave the virtualization up to Parallels, so they can blame it on a third-party if something goes wrong.

> about "fuziness", it will be the job of the video card
> and operating systems to choose good conversion.

See the single-pixel line that separates two inactive Safari tabs? Or the single-pixel line around the 'Add your comments' textbox? How will that look when I scale it up 50%? There's no such thing as half a pixel* and there is NOTHING the video card and OS can do to change that.

Pixels, especially on LCDs, have a magical inherent sharpness. They aren't always perfect, but they do some things very well. Want some examples? Take a screenshot, open it in preview, and resize the window a few times and choose 'zoom to fit' from the 'View' menu. Ugliness ensues.

> is it reality with PDF and fonts, why not for the core
> elements of the interface (menu, scrollbars and the like..)

Because fonts are inherently vector shapes. But even so, there's some work that has to be done. Launch TextEdit, type something, and look at text in the smallest sizes. It really falls apart, in a different ugly way, each point below 12. And try some decimal sizes--that'll really throw it. UIs have lots and lots of little elements. Some things will work as vector shapes, others won't.

* no, sub-pixel rendering (google it) doesn't count.

You might want to check your history there, Shadowself... 72 dpi was the screen resolution on original Macs, but ever since we grew out of 640x480 screens, that's not been the case. PCs have never been 72 dpi. My screen is somewhere around 100 dpi, as is yours, most likely.

If everything is a vector graphic, that's one thing. But 99% of graphics out there are currently bitmaps. And bitmaps tend to look bad scaled.

And why am I not surprised that Microsoft has a new XML vector graphics format instead of just adopting SVG...

windows vista is not "vectorial".

resolution independence already exists in printers and for web navigators and a little in operating systems. you can saw that when you change the font size

opera can scale the whole webpage, as ie 7
PDF and postscript are already "resolution independent".

the whole goal is not to draw with "vector" everything (you can play with that idea in Gnome/Linux if you want, tough , try a "gtk cairo" theme))
the idea is to allow element (bitmap, font or whatever) to be scaled by developpers and users in ways independant from the pixel size of the display.

about "fuziness", it will be the job of the video card and operating systems to choose good conversion.
is it reality with PDF and fonts, why not for the core elements of the interface (menu, scrollbars and the like..) , it's NOT about your pictures and photography.

Sean Finn,
Vector graphics is not the same thing as resolution independence. Adobe Illustrator has had vector graphics since the 80s. However, screen display has always been assumed to by 72 pixels per inch. If the screen used has 120 ppi (like some old RadiUS screens) then an object, when printed on a PostScript printer is 2 inches tall will only be 1.2 inches tall on the screen -- no matter if its shown on screen in vector graphics (using Quartz) or in bitmap (using OS 9.x).

Vista going to vector graphics (as OS X has had for years) is not the same as resolution independence. It's just bringing Vista to whate OS X has been for years.

Screen resolution independence would always show things at their true size regardless of the resolution of the screen. (Of course during initial setup you'd have to tell the OS what the resolution of the screen is .... OR monitor manufacturers would have to include some kind of electrical connection which would tell the OS what the screen resolution is.)

Well, Sam, i do agree with you that vector graphics drain more power than bitmaps. In the part of scalling i'm not sure if I agree. One of the reason for vectors is to avoid the scalling isues. You can see that flash already does a good job on it if you do a good design.

Also, i've checked the new vector tech on vista and it is trully remarkable. I won't say anything on performance because i just don't know about that, but Microsoft explains the "new" language XAML and you can draw vector graphics with text instructions with really good results. Then tere is the new package Microsoft Experience, that lets you make vector graphics and interactive window's apps and you can see the potential. http://www.microsoft.com/experience

I also know that Apple has done something like this on OSX with quartz extreeme 2d or something, i just haven't see it because i'm a recent switcher and started with 10.4.2 and i've heard that if you enable this feature on later than this version you could have kernel panics or something about that. I really don't know.

I just think that resolution independent interfaces are a natural path to evolve, especially with the growth of the display's pixel densities. It is gonna be sloppy for many people, specially for web designers, but they (we) are gonna have to get used to it. Then there is the pontential fractal compresion that could help for the bitmap scalling area.

Sorry for the spelling.

Fun to note from the Daring Fireball link...

"And speaking of Wintel laptop displays, what is the deal with the growing trend of laptop displays being treated with some sort of super-high-gloss finish? This isn’t something where some laptop displays are a bit shinier than others; it’s a dramatic, instantly discernible difference. During a recent trip to Fry’s, the majority of the laptops they had on display had screens which were treated with this hyper-glossy finish."

I've heard Vista will have a similar technology - using Vector graphics instead of Bitmaps to draw everything to the screen, so that Windows can Shrink down but still retain their information. I've not seen it yet, and so can't claim 1st person knowledge. But the guy telling me about it specifically mentioned a Vista version of Entourage as something that will be possible.

In many practical cases, resolution independence means "worse-looking graphics that take a lot more horsepower to generate." Whenever an image's pixels don't match up exactly to the screens pixels, you lose resolution and get a "fuzzier" look. Add to that the fact that web sites may start including too-big images (scaled down) in case someone has a high-resolution display that take twice as long to generate. So if we all start using 200+dpi displays, this could work, but I like my $350 1280x1024 display, and don't relish the thought of being forced to pay over a $1000 just to get my pixels to look right.

All in all, I don't see this whole movement as a hugely positive thing, and I think most consumers would rather do without it, too. Slower and worse quality aren't usually a combination that gets much momentum behind it.