>> /Windows/ doesn't support it? Or just that every 3rd-party
>
> Maybe it's just so clunky for devlopers to support it they don't bother?

I don't know. I haven't looked into this sort of thing. I thought there 
was a "change DPI" setting somewhere in the control panel, but I've got 
no idea how various programs would react to that.

> Android is an example of a better way to do it (but probably not the
> best way).

I know nothing about Andriod.

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> You need to learn how to make 4GB ones, or more correctly, how to build
> a factory to mass produce 4GB ones. And you're not going to do that
> overnight in the lab if you are currently only making 64MB ones. It
> simply won't happen, you'll go bankrupt (because your competitors
> figured out how to make 256MB ones and you didn't) before you figure it
> out.
>
> The only way to do it is to stretch your existing process to make 128MB
> or 256MB ones, trying to fix the odd few problems that will no doubt
> come up. That is called research and development.
>
> Once you have a stable process for 256MB ones, you can again try and
> push to make 512MB or 1GB ones, you will no doubt come up against
> different problems than you had last time, you might need some fairly
> big steps in technology development, but it's possible.

Perhaps it's because I don't work in that sort of industry. All this 
sounds kind of abstract to me. I don't see how going to 10x is "harder" 
than going to 2x. I'm not saying it isn't, I'm saying I don't understand 
why.

>> Then again, cars don't improve in performance at all. Today's cars have
>> performance within a few percent of cars made 40 years ago. And yet,
>> people still buy cars.
>
> Compare pretty much any criteria and cars have vastly improved.

How about, uh, speed?

30 years ago, cars could do 70 MPH. Today, cars can do 70 MPH. As far as 
I know, there's little to no improvement in acceleration either. 
Expensive cars were always faster than cheap cars, but other than that, 
not much change in three decades. Braking is the only thing I can think 
of which might have improved; we have ABS now.

Cars do seem to have more "gadgets" now than they used to. Once upon a 
time, if you wanted electric windows, you'd have to buy a luxury sports 
car. Today it's hard to find a car /without/ electric windows. I'm not 
sure how or why that happened, BTH.

>> On the other hand, pens and pencils don't improve in performance either,
>> and they still sell plenty of those.
>
> That's just because you don't work with designing pens :-) I'm pretty
> sure they are continually using the latest materials and inks available,
> you just don't notice that your pen doesn't snap as easily or
> clog-up/stop working as often as it used to.

To some extent, it's the sort of device that you only notice when it 
/stops/ working. That said, there's been no /noticeable/ improvement. 
And my point, of course, was that even if pens never did improve ever 
again, people would /still/ buy them. Because they're a consumable item.

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>> Compare pretty much any criteria and cars have vastly improved.
>
> How about, uh, speed?
>
> 30 years ago, cars could do 70 MPH. Today, cars can do 70 MPH. As far as
> I know, there's little to no improvement in acceleration either.
> Expensive cars were always faster than cheap cars, but other than that,
> not much change in three decades. Braking is the only thing I can think
> of which might have improved; we have ABS now.

This is what happens when you hit [send] too fast. ;-)

I wonder how much computers would have improved if it was illegal for a 
computer to perform more than seventy billion instructions per second?

Brings a whole new meaning to the words "Internet Explorer has performed 
an illegal operation and must be shut down". ;-)

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> Perhaps it's because I don't work in that sort of industry. All this
> sounds kind of abstract to me. I don't see how going to 10x is "harder"
> than going to 2x. I'm not saying it isn't, I'm saying I don't understand
> why.

Short answer: Go and research how ICs are made.

Long answer: Think of something you could teach yourself to make (eg an 
origami bird or something) and imagine making those and selling them. 
Now consider how hard it would be to make them 2x smaller, a few folds 
might be a bit tricky, but you'd probably manage after a few tests.  Now 
consider if you had to make them 10x smaller, suddenly some folds might 
become impossible unless you use tweezers or something, you might need 
to buy different paper, change the design slightly, it is going to take 
orders of magnitude longer to teach yourself how to reliably make them 
repeatedly, and while you're doing that you're not making the bigger 
ones so you're not getting any money.

If you instead started making the 2x smaller version and got happy with 
that, you could then go 2x smaller again, maybe having to make 1 design 
change.  At each step you have far fewer problems, if you try and jump 
10x or 20x you're just going to give it up because it won't work and you 
won't be able to figure out why.

> 30 years ago, cars could do 70 MPH. Today, cars can do 70 MPH. As far as
> I know, there's little to no improvement in acceleration either.

The problem with speed is that for most people buying a car, price and 
economy comes before top speed, and especially in most countries it's 
illegal to drive much above 70 or 80mph.  So obviously car companies 
have concentrated on keeping price low and reducing fuel usage rather 
than top speed.  But then saying that, if you want to you can easily buy 
a cheap family car that will comfortably go well above 100 mph without 
shaking itself apart - how many cars could do that 30 years ago?

> Expensive cars were always faster than cheap cars, but other than that,
> not much change in three decades. Braking is the only thing I can think
> of which might have improved; we have ABS now.

All the other things I mentioned too, particularly MPG is the main one 
that is top of most manufacturers list of things to improve.

> Cars do seem to have more "gadgets" now than they used to. Once upon a
> time, if you wanted electric windows, you'd have to buy a luxury sports
> car. Today it's hard to find a car /without/ electric windows. I'm not
> sure how or why that happened, BTH.

Same for air-con, electric mirrors, information displays, immobilisers, 
CD players, navigation etc.  All stuff starts out on the 
top-of-the-range models and works it way down to standard on the 
cheapest ones.

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On 10/04/2012 16:53, Invisible wrote:
>>> /Windows/ doesn't support it? Or just that every 3rd-party
>>
>> Maybe it's just so clunky for devlopers to support it they don't bother?
>
> I don't know. I haven't looked into this sort of thing. I thought there
> was a "change DPI" setting somewhere in the control panel, but I've got
> no idea how various programs would react to that.
>
>> Android is an example of a better way to do it (but probably not the
>> best way).
>
> I know nothing about Andriod.

This is a good overview, there are no pre-requisites!

http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

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>>> /Windows/ doesn't support it? Or just that every 3rd-party
>>
>> Maybe it's just so clunky for devlopers to support it they don't bother?
>
> I don't know. I haven't looked into this sort of thing. I thought there
> was a "change DPI" setting somewhere in the control panel, but I've got
> no idea how various programs would react to that.

There is. Display properties, Advance button, general tab.
Defaulted to 72 DPI in win 9x and 2000.
Defaults to 96 in Windows XP and probably Vista. Can be set to a 
"standard" 120 DPI or an arbitrary custom value.
The main problem, is that many applications' display will break down if 
you increase the DPI setting past 96. Some web page layout will also get 
broken if you change your DPI setting. That's why using absolute PIXEL 
values is realy bad.

A viable solution is to sellect the apearance tab and increase the point 
size of your characters. That won't affect the graphics elements but 
will make your text large enough to be read.
Selecting a good high readability font also help.




Alain

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>> I don't know. I haven't looked into this sort of thing. I thought there
>> was a "change DPI" setting somewhere in the control panel, but I've got
>> no idea how various programs would react to that.
>
> There is.

I thought so.

> The main problem, is that many applications' display will break down if
> you increase the DPI setting past 96.

Any specific reason?

> Some web page layout will also get
> broken if you change your DPI setting. That's why using absolute PIXEL
> values is realy bad.

Well, yeah, we all knew that. ;-)

(Though of course if the page is loaded with graphics, all of those are 
rendered at fixed pixel sizes, so...)

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On 4/10/2012 8:54, Invisible wrote:
> How about, uh, speed?

Look at cars where speed above 70MPH actually matters. Like, say, race cars. 
They've gotten much faster.

Cars certainly go faster than 70MPH. Have you tried the difference in ride 
quality at 140MPH between a modern car and a 30-year-old car?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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On 4/10/2012 7:55, scott wrote:
> text was all a bit blocky or blurry depending what setting you used.

300DPI is still a bit blocky and blurry on paper.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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On 4/10/2012 8:47, scott wrote:
> Maybe it's just so clunky for devlopers to support it they don't bother? I

One of my huge regrets in this profession is that we gave up NeWS in favor 
of HTML.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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