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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#301

Post by chrismorgan »

torb-xyz wrote: post #176
chrismorgan wrote: post #95

Concerning the smoothing, I presume this is macOS’s glyph dilation. pcwalton reverse engineered it in order to replicate it in Pathfinder (so that it can render text exactly like Core Text does), concluding that the glyph dilation is “min(vec2(0.3px), vec2(0.015125, 0.0121) * S) where S is the font size in px” ( https://twitter.com/pcwalton/status/918991457532354560 ). Fun times. Trouble is, people then get used to m…

I tried turning off smoothing and frankly the text was uncomfortably thin to read. I guess maybe their font should just be bolder by default so you don't need the glyph dilation to compensate.

I didn’t actually know you could turn it off before today! I’ve never had a Mac, I’m used to FreeType and Windows font rendering.

I have a vague feeling that Macs also have somewhat different gamma treatment from other platforms, which would be likely to contribute to thickness perception.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#303

Post by cosmotic »

lexicality wrote: post #207

Alternatively, just make your text bigger? I use 120% zoom on a 1080p monitor and it looks great. Paying $900 so you can squint at tiny text a bit better seems silly to me...

It looks great to you but a lot of people think it looks blocky or blurry or both, and are willing to pay more to have what they prefer.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#304

Post by vzidex »

gnicholas wrote: post #153
dsabanin wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my 3 monitor setup. In 20 years of coding, I finally reached peak productivity in my workspace. No switching between windows, ease of throwing a window aside for monitoring, laying out information and tools side to side. It’s incredible once you readjust your habits and learn to use that new space. I compare it to having a large, wide desk when you’re working on something. Who wouldn’t want that? I was one of…

> I compare it to having a large, wide desk when you’re working on something. Who wouldn’t want that? I have used between 1-3 monitors over the last decade, and there sure are advantages to having 3 for certain tasks. However, I noticed that having multiple monitors resulted in me having a dedicated screen for email (usually the smallest, my laptop screen). This decreased my productivity. Perhaps not everyone has thi…

> I noticed that having multiple monitors resulted in me having a dedicated screen for email (usually the smallest, my laptop screen)

I'm currently using two external monitors, with my laptop docked and closed. I find the "dedicated screen for " was a problem for me when I had my laptop screen open, because it's a different size/resolution/position than my actual monitors. On the other hand, I never have that problem with my dedicated monitors - in my mind they're a part of the same "workspace" because they're the same size, resolution, and positioned together - so I could see myself going to 3 desktop monitors one day.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#305

Post by Wowfunhappy »

zzo38computer wrote: post #287
thomaslord wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> some web pages zoom text by viewport size, which I hate, and a bigger monitor would then just make it worse.

Not that it excuses bad UX, but you might consider keeping your browser window at something below full width. I find this more comfortable anyway.

Total aside: I've noticed Windows and Linux users tend to keep their windows fully maximized, whereas Mac users don't. Doesn't apply to everyone of course, but enough to be noticed. This was true even before Apple changed the behavior of the green Zoom button, and I've always wondered why.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#306

Post by GordonS »

speeder wrote: post #75

I still use a CRT, because features I want are still ludicrous expensive in newer tech (although they are getting cheaper over time). 1. Arbitrary resolutions, great to run old software and games, even better to run new games at lower resolution to increase performance. 2. Arbitrary refresh rates. 3. Zero (literally) response time. 4. Awesome color range (many modern screens still are 12bit, meanwhile silicon graphic…

Do they even still make CRTs, or are you using a really old one?

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#307

Post by DavidVoid »

pmiller2 wrote: post #248
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…

> ... too opinionated for my liking. Put yourself in the mindset of a typography geek. Then, by default, you will care about almost all of these things. I'm not saying you should care about all of these things all or most of the time, but that's the correct mindset to put you in sync with the author's conclusions (mostly -- I don't really think 120Hz is that big a deal).

> I don't really think 120Hz is that big a deal

IMO 120 Hz monitors are overrated for pretty much everything except for FPS games (and similar fast-paced interactive titles).

I have a 144 Hz display and I would not want to go back to a 60 Hz display for gaming. At some point, my monitor changed to a 60 Hz refresh rate without telling me after some driver update. The first time I played Overwatch after that happened I could immediately tell that something was wrong, since the game just didn't feel as responsive and smooth as it usually does.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#308

Post by wondringaloud »

zarmin wrote: post #28

>Lowercase letters only have 7 (seven!) vertical pixels to work with. That’s NOT MUCH. I have more fingers than that. Quite an argument.

It was at this point I realized the entire premise of the article was a very long-winded way of saying "I like using high DPI monitors when I code". And then tossing in a bunch of technical details to make it sound like a "fact".

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#309

Post by diffeomorphism »

ksec wrote: post #205
diffeomorphism wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the trackpad I agree, but definitely not for the keyboard. And apple was late(!) to hires screens and to hidpi and now has lower res and density than the competition (e.g. 16:10 better 4k on dell xps or 3:2 screens with MS and others). Also, apple had TN screens forever when the similarly priced competition had higher res IPS screens.

>Also, apple had TN screens forever when the similarly priced competition had higher res IPS screens. As far as I am aware Apple only used TN screen for their MacBook Air. They were also the first to push Retina / Hi PPI Display on Consumer PC.

Before "retina" apple used TN and lower res displays on their mbp (compare WUXGA dreamcolor for hp or flexview on thinkpads).

They were not the first. That would be Sony Vaio for hidpi and ultrabooks and ibm and hp for hires ips. Apple were the first widely successful ones.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#310

Post by cmroanirgo »

the_af wrote: post #152
dsabanin wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my 3 monitor setup. In 20 years of coding, I finally reached peak productivity in my workspace. No switching between windows, ease of throwing a window aside for monitoring, laying out information and tools side to side. It’s incredible once you readjust your habits and learn to use that new space. I compare it to having a large, wide desk when you’re working on something. Who wouldn’t want that? I was one of…

I understand this and I don't want to argue against anyone's preferences. You know what's best for you . I'm just pushing back against these out of touch fads. Most developers worldwide don't have a three-monitor setup. There is no proven correlation between quality software and 4K displays or mechanical keyboards (to name other fads). More importantly, the best devs I've known -- people I admire -- used tiny laptops…

May favourite dev environment was a 7" Android 4 running Debian. I got plenty done with an external keyboard.

I bang away at my mba 13" 2013 these days and the only real gripe i have is the lack of delete & backspace keys combo: I've never gotten comfortable without it.

That said, the only reason i could possibly use more screen real estate is web debugging. But to me that's more of an indictment of the environment I'm "coding" in.

The only time ever needed two monitors was back writing 3d games on a 3dfx (before nvidia head hunted their engineers) and needed to debug something while running full screen.

While i understand this argumentation, to me, monitors, their size & their number have always been pretty much...meh. instead it's the quality of the monitor itself (refresh rates, contrast, brightness)

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