Resolution Independence on current Powerbooks

9secondko9secondko
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Barefeats.com just did a quick take ont he new Powerbooks. They say that there is a way to get them resolution independent. Has nayone tried this? Also, since it is available, why is it not default?



Link:



http://www.barefeats.com/pbbrief.html



(half way down the page in orange box)

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    photoeditorphotoeditor Posts: 244member
    Note the hot flash. From the barefeats report . . .



    HOT FLASH: There is a way to make your PowerBook (or Power Mac) resolution independent. It was brought to my attention that if you install the developer tools and launch Quartz Debug. Hit command-U and you can set the resolution of your UI. This works quite nicely. If Apple were to replace all pixel-based graphics with either scalable or larger graphics, this could work perfectly. You could set the resolution on your new PowerBook to 90% to get your old "size" back.



    Also, remember the universal access functions: zoom in. Very handy to view small trailers in your browser. Hit command-option-8 to enable, then command-option = to zoom in and command-option - to zoom out. You can even set the behaviour in the control panel (OK, OK, preferences pane): push sides to scroll, or pan with mouse, etc. Could help you to read small text , without changing the document and without installing developer tools.



    ...end quote



    The catch is a) having to deal with the developer tools and Quartz debug, and, more importantly, b) icons in programs such as MS Word, Photoshop, web browsers and so on are raster and not vector, so they cannot not "grow" with the text in the user interface. One day we'll have a UI that is totally vector based.



    By clawing back on the resolution like that, you'd effectively be telling the computer that for, say, a character of a certain point size, it should occupy 22 pixels by 11 instead of 20 by 10.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by 9secondko

    Barefeats.com just did a quick take ont he new Powerbooks. They say that there is a way to get them resolution independent. Has nayone tried this? Also, since it is available, why is it not default?



    Link:



    http://www.barefeats.com/pbbrief.html



    (half way down the page in orange box)



    Here is Quartz Debug. Try it and you'll see why it doesn't help yet - as photoeditor said, the graphics have to be vector for this to work. Right click or control-click this link and choose to save the file to disk. Then unzip and run it.



    http://homepage.mac.com/johnnylundy/Quartz%20Debug.zip
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