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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#281

Post by WorldMaker »

robertoandred wrote: post #214
clarry wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is everyone so attached to scaling? What is this shit software that 1) everyone relies on and 2) whose UI and font size can't be adjusted like any normal software (or web page) since the 90s? Is this yet another brainfart from Apple?

Probably something to do with the fact that macOS has handled high-dpi perfectly since 2012 and Windows is still struggling.

Windows has great High DPI support. It's Windows applications that often haven't seen upgrades since before even 2012. Windows' commitment to backward compatibility is the struggle. Windows hasn't had the option to just change processor architectures every dozen years on a seeming whim and subsequently force all software to be rewritten or die.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#283

Post by stephc_int13 »

chrismorgan wrote: post #211
the_af wrote: post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

Have you used a 4K display, for at least a few days? If you have, I still disagree with you, but if not, I’m going to completely ignore your opinion, because I find the difference in how pleasant it is to use a good screen just so vast. Sure, you can do things on a lousy monitor, but it’s terrible and you’ll hate it. :) (My first laptop was a second-hand HP 6710b at 1680×1050 for 15″, and that set me to never accepti…

I used a 4K display at work for about 18 months. I still won't trade my 1680x1050 monitors for anything else until they die.

I don't mind the pixels, as long as the font rendering system is good.

Of course I understand the need for a Retina display if you're working on macOS...

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#284

Post by semi-extrinsic »

thomaslord wrote: post #239
the_af wrote: post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

FWIW, my main monitor is a 43" 4k display, and it works perfectly fine on AwesomeWM - but I' don't use any scaling, the 4k is purely for more screen real estate - literally like having 4 perfectly aligned borderless 24" monitors. I can fit 10 full A4 pages of text simultaneously.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#285

Post by egypturnash »

Huh, 4k screens have come down. I could replace this eight-year-old 24" 93dpi Dell screen with a 27" 183dpi HP screen for $540 (plus shipping). I think that's around what I paid for this one when it was new.

(why that HP screen? First thing on Wirecutter's 'best monitors' list, which I think was how I chose the one I'm looking at right now.)

I guess it'd be nice to turn off Illustrator's glitchy anti-aliased previews for good. But this monitor still works perfectly fine. Call me when I can get a color e-paper display with a 60hz or better refresh rate, I'm increasingly tired of staring into a giant light all the time.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#286

Post by stephc_int13 »

chrismorgan wrote: post #263
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4K display isn't bigger though. It only has better resolution, the size of all graphic elements in centimeters stays the same.

That’s the whole point in question: that higher resolution for a given size is an extremely good thing.

Not really. There is an end point. Also, resolution is not free, this is a tradeoff, when you push more pixels on screen it means more work for the GPU (or CPU in some cases) and more loading time and space to load all those high-dpi resources...

At this point I clearly prefer lower latency and higher framerate over more pixels.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#287

Post by zzo38computer »

thomaslord wrote: post #239
the_af wrote: post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

> No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode.

It might depend on the program, too. Some might only work in pixels. Fortunately, it is usually not a problem if you are trying to run a program designed for Gameboy; the emulator should be able to scale it automatically, subject to the user setting. I don't know if any X server has a setting to magnify mouse cursor shapes, but it seems like it should be possible to implement in the X server. Also, it seems like SDL 1.x has no environment variable to magnify the image. My own program Free Hero Mesh (which I have not worked on in a while, because I am working on other stuff) allows icons to be of any size up to 255x255 pixels (the puzzle set can contain icons of any square size up to 255x255, and may have multiple sizes; it will try to find the best size based on the user setting, using integer scaling to grow them if necessary), but currently is limited to a single built-in 8x8 font for text. If someone ports it to a library that does allow zooming, then that might help, too. However, it is not really designed for high DPI displays, and it might not be changed unless someone with a high DPI display wants to use it and modifies the program to support a user option for scaling text too (and possibly also scaling icons to a bigger size than 255x255) (then I might merge their changes, possibly).

Still, I don't need 4K. The size I have is fine, but unfortunately too many things use big text; some web pages zoom text by viewport size, which I hate, and a bigger monitor would then just make it worse.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#288

Post by Androider »

3840 x 1600 is the perfect resolution for programming in my opinion, and is now starting to become more widely available in 38" wide form factor (equivalent to a "normal" 32" but wider). At this size, you can finally comfortably have 2-3 normal-size windows side by side: your editor/IDE, your browser/app, and one third for documentation, without having to go multi-monitor. The 1600p vertical resolution is fantastic for coding. If you're interested in this size, LG 38WN95C is a great one just starting to become available that hits all the marks: Thunderbolt, 144HZ refresh rate (including G-Sync and Adaptive Sync), IPS panel (must) and looks "normal" without any gamer aesthetics or RGB lighting.

Unfortunately it's going to be a very long time before we get high-dpi equivalents. 4K, which is frequently 1080p equivalent in terms of workspace, is just not doable after you've been using 1600p.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#289

Post by foobarian »

sneak wrote: post #258
foobarian wrote: post #178

All my life I had an obsession with more pixels. As kids we always envied the classmates with the highest resolution graphics cards and monitors. The pinnacle of my life at one point was the unnamed best CRT ever made which got up to 1280x1024, but then LCDs happened. My new pinnacle is a beautiful 32" IPS panel on a Benq 4k monitor. I don't care for the refresh rate jump from 60 to 120 as much as 30 to 60. But I abs…

That's a pretty low ppi setup you describe. All of the retina iMacs are 27" 5k, so >200 ppi. A 27" 4k is 160ppi, and a bigger 4k is lower yet.

Indeed. It could be my eyesight, but given a 4k monitor at 27" or 32", I prefer 32" because I can see the (equivalent) information better.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#290

Post by Waterluvian »

asdff wrote: post #206
Waterluvian wrote: post #86

I've found my journey through tooling evolution to be fascinating (to me at least). When I was new and coding was slow, my worries were about so many other things (like how the language even worked) than even what text editor I used, let alone the monitor. As I became experienced, a lot of newbie problems went away and the next topmost problems emerged, leading to be obsessing over text editor, shortcuts, and even a…

Some of my colleagues love a vertical monitor for writing and reading documents.

I loved it too on a mac. When I switched companies and went to an Ubuntu-based laptop, trying to keep the whole monitor scenario working consistently was frustrating, so I dropped it.
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