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

[<tim...@en...>]

> 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 poin=
t
> 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
> similar to a circle.

Hum... I am running on a laptop with a 1024x768 dispay, and if I find tha=
t
in the postscript test image those points are pretty well distinguishable
! Have you turned on gv antialiasing ? (State->Antialias)

> 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)?
> =E2=9C=BF  A flower (Unicode U+273F)?
> =E2=9C   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.

Interesting idea, but the positionning of a font character is not very
easy in general (as for me, I had to fight with pango)...

Timoth=E9e