Resolution indpendence

[Glynn Clements]

Felix Miata wrote:

> > From my experience in a research lab where people
> > handles lots of text, people tend to go for the smallest font size
> > their eyesight can cope with.
> 
> I would expect far more people to differentiate between coping with and
> comfortable with, preferring a somewhat larger size for comfort over the
> smallest they can "cope with", i.e. tolerate.

That depends upon what other priorities you have.

For me, being able to have two 80-column views side-by-side is a very
high priority. Sometimes, being able to have three views is useful
(e.g. where you are merging different versions of a file, and want to
comparing the merged version against both original versions). In that
situation, three "legible" views is better than two "comfortable"
views.

Essentially, legibility is the "bottom line". If you simply can't read
the text at all, it doesn't really matter how much of it you can get
on screen. But anything beyond that often has to be balanced against
other criteria.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>