wizard@sosaria.UUCP (Chris Brand) (02/05/90)
In message <90012722030848@masnet.uucp> john.russell@canremote.uucp writes: > Let me just cast a vote AGAINST all this clamour for more graphics > power. I certainly have more graphics power in a home computer than I > will ever be able to fully exploit (the chip ram limit probably the only > exception). The current paint programs all offer more features than I > can make use of. The ray tracers that take days to run offer little to > me. I have seen enough impressive pictures to last me until my dying > day. Well - for you the Amiga may only be a home computer, but for me and several others it's a living. We NEED more graphics power. What the Amiga has is simply not enough (anymore). Go have a look at the Autodesk Renderman on a 386 and you won't be impressed but depressed by the Amiga graphics. The ray tracers may offer little to you, but to people who seriously work with the Amiga (and have serious equipment like Turboboards) they surely don't. > The best example of over-concern with graphics is the SHAM picture of an > astronaut I've seen... incredible 4096 colour super-complicated palette > switching... to show me a picture that has only 16 grey shades! > I vote that all new graphics modes be PROHIBITED until we start seeing > some user-interface stuff that impresses me as much as those first > DigiView HAM pictures did. Or until my printer starts printing > dot-matrix fonts reasonably well. Or until the animation and > ray-tracing programs become easy enough for me to create some WildCopper > demos using only point-and-click. I agree, the astronaut is a good picture. It's also one of the very few HAM pics that have (quite) no ham-distortion problems. But I could show you hundreds of pictures I've digitized, with not so simple motives (including strong color contrasts for example), that simply look horrible. And believe me - I've got what it takes to digitize good pictures, and I'm doing it since the early days of the first release of DigiView. If you forbid all new graphics modes you forbid development and thus you forbid any chance of survival the Amiga may have. Hmmm...do you mean bitmap fonts? Well, it's not possible to print bitmap fonts without jaggies. They either have to be converted to a vector format (be it Postscript or anything else) or be vector fonts all from the beginning. I've just bought Professional Page 1.3, and the output screams. A friend (who doesn't understand much of computers :-) said when I showed him a example print on my Star LC24-10: "Well all right, but this is done by a laser printer." Sums it up. -- ------------------------------------ Chris Brand - wizard@sosaria.imp.com "Justice is the possession and doing of what one is entitled to" - Platon ------------------------------------
fiddler@concertina.Sun.COM (Steve Hix) (02/09/90)
In article <02206.AA02206@sosaria>, wizard@sosaria.UUCP (Chris Brand) writes: > > Hmmm...do you mean bitmap fonts? Well, it's not possible to print bitmap > fonts without jaggies. They either have to be converted to a vector format > (be it Postscript or anything else) or be vector fonts all from the > beginning. I've just bought Professional Page 1.3, and the output screams. > A friend (who doesn't understand much of computers :-) said when I showed > him a example print on my Star LC24-10: "Well all right, but this is done > by a laser printer." Sums it up. You still can't get away from the jaggies (unless you've got true vector output devices). PostScript or not, the output from a laserprinter still has jaggies...albeit at 300 dpi. Even a 2400bpi PostScript laser setter has jaggies. You might need a microscope to see them. But they're still there. Implies that at a certain level, the imperfection is good enough. Trouble comes when you try to set the lower bound of acceptability. (The Amiga's best graphics modes haven't reached that lower limit yet, imo. But the cost of devices that currently do...) ------------ "...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..." Plato, _Phaedrus_
ifarqhar@mqccsunc.mqcc.mq.OZ (Ian Farquhar) (02/16/90)
In article <131511@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> fiddler@concertina.Sun.COM (Steve Hix) writes: >has jaggies...albeit at 300 dpi. Even a 2400bpi PostScript laser setter >has jaggies. You might need a microscope to see them. But they're still >there. Actually, they are "roundies", because the optics just cannot focus a square down to that size. This has a quite nice side-effect, because roundies are far less objectionable than jaggies. "AI is also an acronym for Artificial Ignorance" Ian Farquhar Phone : (612) 805-7420 Office of Computing Services Fax : (612) 805-7433 Macquarie University NSW 2109 Also : (612) 805-7205 Australia Telex : AA122377 ACSNet ifarqhar@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz.au ifarqhar@suna.mqcc.mq.oz.au D