Resolution Independence Support in Snow Leopard?

[llahsram]

It ONLY matters for future high-dpi displays.

This isn't necessarily true. Some displays right now are considered to be too high of a DPI for some people.

I know people who cannot read text on your average 17" LCD at the native resolution, whether due to poor eyesight or sitting too far back from the screen or whatever. They could get a bigger display, but that almost always means a higher resolution, so the physical text size on the display is still too small for them.

They work around this by setting the system to a lower resolution: for example, if a display has a native 1280x1024 resolution, they might set it to 1024x768, or even 800x600. (Most of us can't fathom giving up screen resolution like that, but that's what they do.) The trouble is, as anyone knows who's set an LCD to a non-native resolution, everything gets blurred. The LCD has a fixed number of pixels, and it's getting input that doesn't map to those pixels, so it averages a bunch of the data and you wind up with a muddy mess.

Resolution independence solves this problem. It keeps the LCD display at its native resolution, e.g. 1280x1024, but gives them a virtual 1024x768 or 800x600 display. That is, rather than making the LCD come up with the missing pixels, the operating system itself makes the menus, buttons, text, etc. larger by filling in the missing pixels that it knows ought to be there. So instead of text getting blurry, it actually gets sharper, just like changing the font size from 12pt to 16pt would do.

So there are real advantages to resolution independence today. Perhaps not for those with perfect eyesight, but for people who are already struggling with the resolution of monitors, it gives them readability without sacrificing image quality.

 

[llahsram]

Anyone know if the 'Resolution Independence' works for all Mac app's or the app must be built for 'Resolution Independence'

It depends on how the application was written.

Cocoa applications get it automatically, though for best results, the developer will need to use vector art or multiple-resolution images for icons, and will need to take the scale factor into account for any custom controls.

Java (Swing) applications also get it automatically (Swing is implemented using Cocoa on Mac OS X as of Java 1.4).

Carbon applications do not get scaled automatically; they go into "magnified" mode, which is basically the same effect as when you use the zoom feature in Mac OS X today. The pixels just get scaled up and averaged, which ends up blurring the image. The developer can, on a window-by-window basis, choose to tell the system to go ahead and use resolution-independent scaling on a window by setting an attribute on the window.

Apple has more information in a Resolution Independence Guidelines document on their developer site.

 

[shawnce]

Which it should've been in Leopard.
Snow Leopard is basically 10.5 take 2.

Snow Leopard has a LOT changing in terms of clean up, switching core apps, etc. to 64 bit, and various new technologies that I can't say more about because of NDA. While it doesn't appear (not marketed yet) to have many end users features it has a lot of developer and internal features. It is much more then just a simple minor point release.

Also one feature that will obviously have to come into existence (more then what 10.5 can support) is robust NUMA support given Intel's Nehalem use of Quick Path and on board memory controller.

 

[foniks2020]

What RI means to me

For me the biggest benefit to RI, on Hi-Resolution displays, will be text and image quality.

Right now I don't really enjoy reading prose on screen... I print it out. Printed media is so much higher resolution than screen that the difference is like apples and oranges. It's why eBook readers still aren't that great... still not high enough resolution... compared to printed books that is. With RI on a high enough DPI screen, text content will look as sharp and clear as printed text.

The problem today is that if the display is that high DPI then the user interface (icons, menus, etc) would be so small on screen that you could not get your mouse pointer over them without completely covering them up... much less click on them with any precision. This is why we need Resolution Independence for the user interface.

For photographers or designers this will help considerably... also for average person as well, since a photo that normally would be so big (in pixel dimensions) that only the smallest section of a corner would be visible on a typical monitor, could be displayed full size with full detail... and it would be like looking at a super high quality art print. You wouldn't need to zoom in at all to see the details of the photo... think retina of an eye of a person in a crowd.. this would be sharp and clear on screen (given a high quality photo) without needing to zoom in.

I could give more examples... but essentially it allows you to use a super high quality display that can show text and photographs like a printed piece while still showing all the windows and buttons, etc. at the proper size for clicking on them.

 

[MacFly123]

Now that just leaves the problem of what to use multitouch for

I mean stretched and flipping images is cool n all, but has anyone actually come up w/ a decent function for multitouch? I haven't seen ANYTHING... :/

Well obviously it is hardly implemented yet but with what little Apple has done so far before this whole implementation they will have in Snow Leopard, I can say for example that the 3 finger swipe for forward and back in Safari is a great example of a practical and very beneficial use of Multi-Touch!

With the new framework every app will be able to implement tons of little useful things like that in their apps, meanwhile Windows 7 will be stretching and rotating pictures while smudging up their screen like you said lol.

 

[MacFly123]

They are refering to multi-touch trackpad support (in the MacBook Air and Pro), so a 3rd party app can use the zoom and three-finger swipe. Not full-multitouch like people are drooling over.

I know! It is all in the way that Apple is implementing Multi-Touch.

I think the touch screen, rotate and pinch photos on your screen, Windows 7 style implementation of Multi-Touch is RIDICULOUS and pretty much USELESS.

I do NOT think Apple is going to implement Multi-Touch that way unless they actually do a giant Jeff Han style Cinema Display some years from now. I think Apple is going to implement Multi-Touch on the laptops (as they have been) then soon after to the desktops as a compliment that comes step by step. First with the trackpads then soon to full touch surfaces that replace the keyboard and mouse but NOT on the screen. You know the patents that have described this idea and I think it would be a MUCH BETTER implementation then smudging up your screen and having your arms aching all day!

Sorry for the double post, MOD please combine my two. Thanks!

 

[Vanarak19]

it seems like apple is in "Leave-users-behind mode"

yea thats right.

leopard has been out what, 6months? already a refresh on it? lame.

how bout making this stuff available in 10.5.x instead of 10.6.

just seems apples mentality has shifted the past year to the iphone, and NEW STUFF. Forget the stuff we released x months ago.

 

[kabunaru]

it seems like apple is in "Leave-users-behind mode"

yea thats right.

leopard has been out what, 6months? already a refresh on it? lame.

how bout making this stuff available in 10.5.x instead of 10.6.

just seems apples mentality has shifted the past year to the iphone, and NEW STUFF. Forget the stuff we released x months ago.

I agree with you. Just what is Apple thinking these days?

 

[ablemac]

See it for yourself: Zoom in FireFox 3

If you want to see the difference RI makes, you can view this web page in FireFox 3 and Zoom all the way up. Firefox 2 and earlier only enlarges the text, but in FireFox 3 it zooms the whole page. The images are dynamically resized to match the zoom factor, and instead of just making the text letters "bigger" it scales the font to the right size so they're both bigger and sharper.

WIN: Control <+>
MAC: Command <+>
(use Command ++++++++ until it maxes out.)

(reset the zoom with Command <0> or Control <0> or use the View Menu / Zoom / Reset Zoom).

Some text is actually embedded into images, so it won't get sharper, just bigger. This is obvious in the "Mac Rumors:Forum" banner at the top of the page.

 

[Mal]

it seems like apple is in "Leave-users-behind mode"

yea thats right.

leopard has been out what, 6months? already a refresh on it? lame.

how bout making this stuff available in 10.5.x instead of 10.6.

just seems apples mentality has shifted the past year to the iphone, and NEW STUFF. Forget the stuff we released x months ago.

Did you miss the part where this is a year from release? Besides, why complain about technology progressing too fast? It's not going to slow down anytime soon.

jW

 

[gnasher729]

I still don't understand it, and I am not stupid. I need to see examples of this because so far, no-one has explained it well.

There are several different uses of it; I'll try to explain one.

Let's say you are getting a bit older, your eye sight isn't as good as it used to be, and things one your 20 inch monitor look a bit small. Let's say you have a 20 inch monitor at 1680 x 1050 pixels. A good solution for your problem is to buy a 22 inch monitor at 1680 x 1050 pixels. It displays exactly the same things as the 20 inch monitor, just a bit bigger. Forty year olds love it, twenty year olds find this rather pointless. This works with any OS, without resolution independence.

Now lets say you can't afford to buy another monitor. So you go into Preferences, and change your 20 inch display from 1680 x 1050 to 1440 x 900 pixels. What happens now: The display now pretends to be 1440 x 900 pixels. Your Mac draws fewer pixels, but they look bigger. Unfortunately, because of limitations in the hardware of LCD screens, everything looks a bit unsharp (that doesn't happen if you have an old CRT monitor).

Now with resolution independence, you could instead go into Preferences and tell the Mac to draw everything 10 percent larger. All text will be drawn a bit larger, scrollbars are a bit larger, the menubar is larger and so on. Everything is drawn in the same 1680 x 1050 resolution as before, but it is larger and therefore more readable.

The problem is that this is easier said then done. An obvious problem: Some text is underlined with a 1 pixel thick line. You tell the OS to display everything 10 percent larger. Making the text 10 percent larger is no problem. Making a ten pixel wide scrollbar ten percent wider is no problem. But you can't make a 1 pixel thick line ten percent thicker. You just can't draw lines that are 1.1 pixels thick. So the user interface designer has to put some thought into it and figure out what should happen at each different scaling factor.

Anyway.. You know you can buy a MacBook Pro with a 17 inch screen with either 1680 x 1050 or 1920 x 1200 resolution (hope I got the numbers right). Without resolution independence, the 1920 x 1200 screen displays more stuff but smaller compared to the 1680 x 1050. With resolution independence, you have the choice: You can use the higher resolution to display more things smaller, or you can use the higher resolution to display the same things in the same size as with the 1680 x 1050 screen, but at a higher quality.

 

[kabunaru]

You can use the higher resolution to display more things smaller, or you can use the higher resolution to display the same things in the same size as with the 1680 x 1050 screen, but at a higher quality.

I will take the second choice. Thanks on the explanation.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

If you want to see the difference RI makes, you can view this web page in FireFox 3 and Zoom all the way up. Firefox 2 and earlier only enlarges the text, but in FireFox 3 it zooms the whole page. The images are dynamically resized to match the zoom factor, and instead of just making the text letters "bigger" it scales the font to the right size so they're both bigger and sharper.

WIN: Control <+>
MAC: Command <+>
(use Command ++++++++ until it maxes out.)

(reset the zoom with Command <0> or Control <0> or use the View Menu / Zoom / Reset Zoom).

Some text is actually embedded into images, so it won't get sharper, just bigger. This is obvious in the "Mac Rumors:Forum" banner at the top of the page.

Font's have the vector capabilities of scaling upwards, whereas bitmap imagery is fixed.

Zoom is not Resolution Independence.

 

[gnasher729]

Will this ever change in the future to support the higher resolutions I mentioned?

Single link DVI supports 1920 x 1200. Dual link DVI supports twice that, so it could do 1920 x 2400 but in practice it is used for 2560 x 1600 (it could do 2704 x 1696). The more expensive Mac graphics cards have two dual link DVI connectors. This could obviously be used to run two 1920 x 2400 monitors, or one monitor with two connectors displaying 3840 x 2400 pixels. No problem with today's technology. If you had a MacPro with two such graphics cards, you could run a 5120 x 3200 monitor, even though that monitor would need _four_ dual link DVI ports and four monitor cables.

 

[shawnce]

leopard has been out what, 6months? already a refresh on it?

I agree with you. Just what is Apple thinking these days?

The release time between Leopard and Snow Leopard will likely be around 18 months which is on the longer side of time between Mac OS X releases. Note Apple has stated that they are aiming for 18 to 24 month development cycles for Mac OS X.

10.0 (Cheetah) - March 24th, 2001
10.1 (Puma) - September 29th, 2001 - 6 months
10.2 (Jaguar) - August 13th, 2002 - 11 months
10.3 (Panther) - November 10th, 2003 - 15 months
10.4 (Tiger) - April 29th, 2005 - 17 months (iPhone OS started in 2005 based on reports)
10.5 (Leopard) - October 26th, 2007 - 30 months
10.6 (Snow Leopard) - 2009 - est. 18 months

(http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html)

 

[shawnce]

Zoom is not Resolution Independence.

Correct (however the same realities are generally at play)

RI is (conceptually) about keeping the text (etc.) with the same physical size while adding detail thanks to the extra pixels available on a higher DPI device.

One existing real world way to see RI in action is to look at the output of a 300 DPI and 1200 DPI laser printer side by side. You will see that the content of the printed page has the same physical sizing (the letter A is the same height and width on both pieces of paper) yet the edges of the text, etc. will be much smoother/crisper at 1200 DPI then at 300 DPI (since more pixels are available to render the edge).

This same thing will apply to RI when available on displays running at 288 or so DPI compared to todays ~100 DPI.

 

[Vanarak19]

Did you miss the part where this is a year from release? Besides, why complain about technology progressing too fast? It's not going to slow down anytime soon.

jW

yea i know, but software is not hardware. Software needs updating, to work kinks out. WE ALL KNOW there is kinks in leopard. Im sure apple will work them out, but good lord....snow leopard? Why not give that to us FREE, in an optimization pack for leopard? really too bad, because ive really been less than impressed with leopards "performance."


lots of spinning beach balls on a 2.4 MBP penny, with 4gb ram. I wonder if its my 200gb 5400 though, who knows.

I love the features in leopard, but the performance, well, its not ready.

 

[shawnce]

yea i know, but software is not hardware. Software needs updating, to work kinks out.

10.5.4 is in the works and we likely will see several more minor point releases to correct issues, add hardware support, and enhance features before Snow Leopard comes around.

Why not give that to us FREE, in an optimization pack for leopard?

Apple has made no statement about the pricing yet. Who knows... (Puma was a free upgrade to Cheetah)

lots of spinning beach balls on a 2.4 MBP penny, with 4gb ram. I wonder if its my 200gb 5400 though, who knows.

What applications are you using? What application is showing this.

I love the features in leopard, but the performance, well, its not ready.

Leopard has a better performance profile on recent hardware then Tiger does in most respects. Note that Leopard is often doing more then Tiger ever did periodically thanks to things like Time Machine, more complete Spotlight indexing, etc.

 

[devman]

This isn't necessarily true. Some displays right now are considered to be too high of a DPI for some people.

agreed. The current MBP17 HD version at 133dpi is too much for me which is why I went with the nonHD version.

But, as you say, it's subjective. There are many, many posts on this site from people asking for those resolutions on MBP15s (!)

 

[matticus008]

OK, it was how I thought then. So treating graphics as vectors means that when you make them take up more pixels, they don't looks scruffy because they're vectors and not just expanded images.

Actually, the explanation offered had nothing to do with widget or glyph quality, explicitly sidestepping that issue. Resolution independence strictly speaking doesn't care how good the rendering of elements is, only that the components be rendered at a constant physical or proportional size, regardless of the number of pixels on the screen.

Switching to vectorized graphics is an important consideration to make RI attractive with high-DPI displays, but it's a separate issue and there is no mechanized conversion. Apple can't implement that fix on its own. Resolution Independence, however, is fully functional in Leopard (though disabled). It's not used because it is ugly with all the bitmap artwork in many applications.

How does the resolution independence work? What I mean is, how would the component know the size and shape of screen, etc.? My current monitor is a TV, it's decent but even without resolution independence, Windows XP is unaware of its dimensions (unlike with a dedicated monitor, which it seems to pick up).

It doesn't need to know the size or shape of the display directly. It knows (or has been told) the resolution of the display and the scale factor to use.

You can use two methods: physical size, which requires information on the display's DPI, or percentages. Knowing a display is 100dpi and 1000 pixels wide tells you that it's 10" across. Alternatively, specifying that the menubar is 5% tall means that it'll be 5px on a 100px vertical span and 50px on a 1000px height.

Non-square pixels will still render ellipses instead of circles. Compensating for that is not resolution independence and is something that should be handled by the display hardware, not the computer.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Correct (however the same realities are generally at play)

RI is (conceptually) about keeping the text (etc.) with the same physical size while adding detail thanks to the extra pixels available on a higher DPI device.

One existing real world way to see RI in action is to look at the output of a 300 DPI and 1200 DPI laser printer side by side. You will see that the content of the printed page has the same physical sizing (the letter A is the same height and width on both pieces of paper) yet the edges of the text, etc. will be much smoother/crisper at 1200 DPI then at 300 DPI (since more pixels are available to render the edge).

This same thing will apply to RI when available on displays running at 288 or so DPI compared to todays ~100 DPI.

Yes 1200dpi fonts versus 300dpi fonts provide for a more complete, crisp and better contrasted font type [assuming it's not a rasterized font but a vector font set [postscript/opentype/truetype].

The output dumb device [printer] has to have the capability to draw to the device at 1200dpi in order to see the improvement.

The screen LED/OLED/LCD is a dumb device that needs to have the capability to have an intermediate take the Eigenvalue/Eigenvector matrix manipulations and have them draw to screen either as an on-the-fly rasterizing of it to a pixelated format or somehow truly have an embedded pattern of mini-led crystals which are not pixels and can handle vector results via hardware interpolation.

The OS and the dumb device have to have a mechanism to manage screen dimensions via a local/Global coordinate system which makes areas on the screen with varying dpi outputs so that the user doesn't see these views bounding boxes and that they can overlay one another, seemlessly similar to layers at varying color depths, colorspaces and more. [bounding boxes have to be seemless and manage their range and domain sets without crashing into other bounding boxes and thus leaving a pixelated blurring, let alone sharing the same z-plane coordinate space]

Zooming a 5" x 7" at 300dpi is effectively scaling up the image to match this file at the native screen resolution.

So if your screen resolution is 100dpi you have, effectively a 15" x 21" zoom of the document.

That's not vectorization of the image and as we agree it isn't Resolution Independence.

RI will be 15" x 21" at 300dpi/600dpi/1200dpi/2400dpi, etc, and the clarity of the effects, color and boundary curves of the image layers will be redrawn, on-the-fly, with very low latency and not introduce scaling lags.

You want the scale effect, genie effect or any other non-linear view effect to have no traces of redraws, loss of dpi and apply colorspace, effects and post rasterized imagery results equal to or less than the refresh latency of the display.

If I have a < 5ms latency I want my scaling latency to be < 4.9999 ms to have it be seemless.

 

[devman]

Actually, the explanation offered had nothing to do with widget or glyph quality, explicitly sidestepping that issue. Resolution independence strictly speaking doesn't care how good the rendering of elements is, only that the components be rendered at a constant physical or proportional size, regardless of the number of pixels on the screen.

Switching to vectorized graphics is an important consideration to make RI attractive with high-DPI displays, but it's a separate issue and there is no mechanized conversion. Apple can't implement that fix on its own.

well said and quite correct.

Resolution Independence, however, is fully functional in Leopard (though disabled). It's not used because it is ugly with all the bitmap artwork in many applications.

this depends on the definition of fully functional. There's a lot to it. e.g. what happens on a dual monitor setup as you drag a window from monitor 1 to monitor 2. As it spans both monitors and both monitors have different DPIs (imagine a graphic that spans both monitors). What about plugin content in a browser window such as flash content in safari and the scale factor is changed. carbon apps get no o/s assist, they are literally zoomed. cocoa apps get o/s assist, but the apps themselves need to switch to multi-image tiff files for raster artwork at different scale factors, switch to using vector artwork where appropriate, and then handle things like pixel cracks and device alignment at fractional scale factors.

 

[matticus008]

What about plugin content in a browser window such as flash content in safari and the scale factor is changed.

They are zoomed, just as Carbon apps. There's no other way to manage this, unfortunately.

carbon apps get no o/s assist, they are literally zoomed.

One reason for the continuing delay in activation. Apple has been actively trying to kill Carbon for about four years now, but Adobe seems to be resisting.

the apps themselves need to switch to multi-image tiff files for raster artwork at different scale factors,

Not strictly necessary for RI. This is part of the artwork replacement that is the reason it is currently disabled in Leopard, but purely for aesthetic reasons.

handle things like pixel cracks and device alignment at fractional scale factors.

I don't see how the current rounding system can be substantially improved. A 1px line at factor 1.5 will be drawn as either 1px or 2px depending on the vertical pixel count of the rest of the display. Higher DPI displays will automatically provide more granular rounding options in the future.

 

[twoodcc]

this sounds great! and the cinema displays do need an upgrade

 

[bobertoq]

can't wait for nice large vector images in coverflow!

yaaaaah!

Why are some of the apps still so huge? Safari is 61MB! Firefox is 17.2 MB and that's with the PPC code.

Some apps like iCal, iChat, iSync, Mail, and Safari are a little large. Oh well, still great improvements. Mail lost nearly 200 MB and is still over 90 MB