Re: Expecting all terminals to be the same [was: Re: x11 point symbols]

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Monday 27 February 2006 12:41 pm, Timoth=C3=A9e Lecomte wrote:
> > On Monday 27 February 2006 11:40 am, Ga=C3=ABl Varoquaux wrote:
> >> On Mon, Feb 27, 2006 at 10:05:11AM -0800, Ethan Merritt wrote:
> >> > Better to have fewer symbols that are mutually distinguishable
> >> > than to cycle through  symbols that are confusingly similar.
> >>
> >>     Well, I see your point but I actually think it is annoying to
> >> have different renders with different terminals.
>
> In fact, such a distinction may tend to disappear, because most of
> the work on pixel-based applications can be done through libraries
> which support subpixel-accuracy, which is related to antialiasing.

It is true that I am very impressed by the crisp font rendering in the
wxWidgets terminal as compared to straight x11.  But that only
extends so far, and not everyone sits in front of a huge monitor.

Have a look at the postscript test image as displayed through
ghostview or gv on a 1024x768 X display.  Do you really think that point
types 14 and 15 are distinguishable from 6 and 7 without enlarging
the local region by a factor of 8 or so?   A pentagon is just too=20
similar to a circle.

If there is a compelling case for having a consistent set of 16
point symbols,  I'd suggest we  start by considering what other
symbols might be used for the last two, rather than pentagons.
=E2=9C=AB  A star (Unicode U+272B)?  =20
=E2=9C=BF  A flower (Unicode U+273F)? =20
=E2=9C=A0  A Maltese cross (Unicode U+2720)?

In fact, it might be a good idea in general to pick symbols that
are present in a scalable unicode font.  That would allow more
terminals to get the improved antialiasing/sub-pixel hinting
benefits that I expect will continue to be added to font rendering
libraries.


=2D-=20
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle WA