Time to Upgrade Your Monitor • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#931

Post by seqizz » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #459

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…

FWIW, switching between resolutions in my favorite desktop environment, Xfce, is two steps: # This affects every GTK app. xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Xft/DPI -s 144 The second step is going to about:config in Firefox, and setting layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to a higher value than 1.0. I really need to write an extension to do that in one click. What is really tricky, though, it's having two monitors with different DP…

Check out user.js, it's a built-in feature. You can declare which config values you want under Firefox profile folder.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#932

Post by shezi » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

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…

I'm not going to argue your preferences, but then why don't you get one 50 inch 4k display? That's about four of your current displays at similar density on a single cable. And probably at a similar price point, too.

Or, if you are using decent graphics hardware, you could even get two of them and have four times more display space than you have now.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#933

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

clarry wrote: post #849

glouwbug wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend, when I moved into my new apartment I went without WiFi for 2 years and did nothing but code on my T43. In that time I managed to rewrite (a variant of) Age of Empires 2.

> (a variant of) Age of Empires 2. What's this?

[deleted]

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#934

Post by shmerl » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

> I don’t really care for wide gamut or even proper color reproduction.

I do. Having irritating colors makes looking at text annoying as well.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#935

Post by mulmen » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

CaptainMarvel wrote: post #864

CaptainMarvel wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able to use a 5120x1440 resolution on my MacBook Pro using SwitchResX. No idea why Mac OS doesn’t let you select that resolution.

To clarify: I mean I have no idea why Mac OS doesn't let ME select that resolution while SwitchResX does.

I’m not sure what SwitchResX actually does. None of the accounts I have seen online are thorough enough to draw any conclusion.

As far as I can tell it is the same as Option-clicking on scaled in the display preferences.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#936

Post by the_af » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

g-b-r wrote: post #655

the_af wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the added screen real estate, I find my external 1080p LG monitor simply looks better than my Dell Latitude's. The laptop display just looks... cheaper. It's hard to explain, it just looks worse.

Well, maybe it's because it's worse :D

Definitely. To be honest I've never seen a quality 1366x768 laptop screen, because the low res [1] usually goes hand in hand with cheap laptops.

[1] it's hilarious that 1366x768 is called "HD", because marketing. It wasn't high definition even on the day it was introduced.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#937

Post by notSupplied » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

lifty wrote: post #620

stephc_int13 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Not sure I follow. Are you saying that font rendering on macOS is bad?

Not necessarily "bad".

Font rendering on macOS is more "authentic" to the original shape at the expense of clarity from hinting/pixel-snapping.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#938

Post by holstvoogd » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

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…

Amazing how many militant replies you are getting. I don’t care for 4k & 5k displays. I find it more tiering to work on all day some how.

But based on the replies, I am wrong and probably retarded ;)

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#939

Post by diroussel » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

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…

Maybe this was done to emulate font bleed that happens in the printing process. It's a common problem that latex PDFs look too light, because the build int fonts where copied from mechanical type, which assumed the ink would bleed on the page.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#940

Post by ProZsolt » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

smichel17 wrote: post #269

arvinsim wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Multiple monitors are slightly different: the physical gap means it’s not a seamless switch and not every task benefits. Probably why ultrawides are gaining popularity.

I agree, and not. I like having many windows side-by-side (code, docs, thing I'm developing), but I also like having more vertical space. I keep one of my monitors vertical for coding, although that's a little too tall so there's some lost space at the top and bottom (9:12 would be better for me). Really I want a single plus-shaped monitor that can act in several display modes: - mimic 3 monitors. Left and right are…

Vertical space is necessary, that's why I choose the Dell U3818DW[1], It has 1600 pixels vertically

[1]: https://www.dell.com/si/business/p/dell-u3818dw-monitor/pd