Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

tonsky.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 1001 posts

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#371

Post by Nullabillity »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #305
zzo38computer wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 en…

I guess macOS' window management is bad enough that treating it as a pile of paper is the only way to manage.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#373

Post by orestis »

Do all that, of course. But when you’re writing applications for other people, go buy a shitty middle of the pack laptop, resolution 1280x768, with the windows start bar and menu bars eating like 150pixels of that, and try to use your software there.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#374

Post by gauchojs »

Conclusion after reading tens of comments here: no way to know if I'm young enough for 27" 4k (which is finally affordable in my country) or if I should go with 2560x1440 at 24", which feels outdated in 2020...

And that isn't a great step over my working 22" 10-year old 22" FHD Dell.

How long until we have affordable 'Macbook like' crispness as 22" or 27"?

(Also Linux still sucks with fractional scaling.)

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#375

Post by elondaits »

xyst wrote: post #196

Personally, my takeaways from this article are to disable font smoothing. I disabled it on my MBP and I like how the default fonts are rendered now. They appear less bright and more crisper. I haven't changed these settings on my MBP since I got it, so it's likely enabled by default. The rationale behind it makes sense in low resolution cases, but to have it enabled by default on rMBP doesn't make sense to me. Howeve…

That part of the article does not apply to my 13'' 2015 MBP... I checked and it already uses 2x resolution by default. Perhaps it applies to larger screens or newer models.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#376

Post by zzo38computer »

bitwize wrote: post #360
zzo38computer wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What X server? You should be using Wayland. X does not intrinsically support automatic scaling. Wayland does.

The protocol is irrelevant. It isn't an extension to the protocol, and would not be seen by clients. It is an implementation detail.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#377

Post by alkonaut »

4K at 200% scaling feels wrong for a big monitor like a 27". The desktop looks like a 1080 desktop. And if the monitor is to be used as a gaming monitor too then 4K is again wrong because even with the best graphics cards, 4K@120 is out of reach.

The perfect 27” monitor for me would be one that has 5K@120 because at 200% scale you’d get a desktop that looks “1440-size” and when gaming you can run half resolution at 1440@120 with a decent graphics card.

These don’t exist though, at least not as IPS I think, so I’ll stick with my 1440@144 for a while longer.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#378

Post by bostik »

wondringaloud wrote: post #308
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".

More like "I like looking at really smoothly rendered TTF fonts".

I've tried to use TTF fonts in terminal. None of them work well enough, or renders better than the classic 6x13.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#380

Post by edanuff »

Echoing some of the comments here, part of this depends on whether you’re using MacOS or not and what else you’re using the monitors for. I use 4K monitors for both Mac and Windows and I stick close to the Apple recommended HiDPI approach which means your 4K display isn’t larger than 24” and your 5K display isn’t larger than 27”. YMMV but most people who have a bad 4K experience are trying to do 4K at 27” or greater. Due to DisplayPort 1.2 bandwidth limitations, the 5K 27” monitor market never got - great range of options. You either have the Thunderbolt-based monitors that are mostly for use in the Mac ecosystem (and only some Mac models) or a few expensive dual-cable DisplayPort 1.2 options or DisplayPort 1.4 options with an assortment of compatibility issues.
Post reply on HN