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Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

martin.wojtczyk.de

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Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#11

Post by tanelpoder »

stonethrowaway wrote: post #8
tanelpoder wrote: post #4

Haha, off-by-one pixel error! I still see MacOS as the best choice for my desktop/laptop uses (browser and SSH), but I also have a documents folder that I’ve accumulated over decades. I still use various .txt files in the docs folder as my low tech note taking apps. I use the Spotlight or Alfred keyboard shortcuts (that also use spotlight index?) for quickly opening the files when needed - and annoyingly my most impo…

Speaking of bad vision for a moment I thought I read “I still see MsDOS as the best choice” and almost yelled out what patrician taste!

Well, you can run multitasking in TSRs & keyboard interrupt handlers (the original event loop)… implementing a window manager and TCP stack is left as an exercise to the reader…

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#14

Post by dylan-m »

One of my favourite unreported MacOS issues comes from how, at some point, they changed the appearance of the window close button to be a particular shade of red with a tiny little X in the center. And if you happen to be using a particular kind of screen and possibly wearing glasses, that little X kind of wanders around in the button, appearing just slightly off center in a maddening way. Made only more maddening by the glasses component: https://www.robbert.org/2014/10/the-off-center-close-button/.

That post points out it’s probably just subpixel stuff causing the issue, but I think my thick, cheap glasses at the time were adding a layer of chromatic aberration to something that was already visually confusing.

I assume it’s kind of gone away at this point with all the high DPI screens these days. But I remember thinking at the time, if there was a public bug tracker, that issue would be a fun one.

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#15

Post by nomel »

hakanderyal wrote: post #2

My bet would be on some compounding error from long usage also. I'm using Apple Notes and it fails in some random ways after keeping it open for 1-2 weeks: When I try to copy something I select, it copies some random stuff, dragging text won't work, I can check/uncheck todo boxes. Goes away when I restart it.

Maybe the offsets themselves represent a binary number within that byte that corresponding to the bits within that byte. Maybe if you give it the right sequence, a message will emerge.

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#16

Post by waveymaus »

ntrcessor wrote: post #3

If I recall correctly, that is a kerning issue with the font. At the edges of the font is not a solid line, but rather more like every other pixel so that the characters can be closer together. This causes the up/down movement of one character to the next, as they fit together like poorly made puzzle pieces. And just how bad it looks depends on the size of the pixel on the monitor, and how much "bleed" it has with it…

kerning does not shift characters up and down, only left and right.

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#17

Post by trilbyglens »

teo_zero wrote: post #10
ntrcessor wrote: post #3

If I recall correctly, that is a kerning issue with the font. At the edges of the font is not a solid line, but rather more like every other pixel so that the characters can be closer together. This causes the up/down movement of one character to the next, as they fit together like poorly made puzzle pieces. And just how bad it looks depends on the size of the pixel on the monitor, and how much "bleed" it has with it…

Isn't kerning about left-right and not up-down, though?

Yes

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#18

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

tanelpoder wrote: post #11
stonethrowaway wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of bad vision for a moment I thought I read “I still see MsDOS as the best choice” and almost yelled out what patrician taste!

Well, you can run multitasking in TSRs & keyboard interrupt handlers (the original event loop)… implementing a window manager and TCP stack is left as an exercise to the reader…

> implementing a window manager and TCP stack is left as an exercise to the reader…

I'm pretty sure both of those have implementations available for DOS already.

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#19

Post by jfoutz »

teo_zero wrote: post #10
ntrcessor wrote: post #3

If I recall correctly, that is a kerning issue with the font. At the edges of the font is not a solid line, but rather more like every other pixel so that the characters can be closer together. This causes the up/down movement of one character to the next, as they fit together like poorly made puzzle pieces. And just how bad it looks depends on the size of the pixel on the monitor, and how much "bleed" it has with it…

Isn't kerning about left-right and not up-down, though?

I think ascents and descents fall under keming. You don’t want a j to bump into a b on the next line. So you have short letters from time to time. But that might be an archaic usage, or I’m wrong.

Re: Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator

#20

Post by tsimionescu »

galad87 wrote: post #6

macOS on a low dpi screen is mostly full of those kind of issues. I wouldn't recommend using a low dpi screen.

The problem appeared in the screenshots that the article shows, I don't think it has anything to do with the screen.
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