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In a "logical pixel" system (macOS, Wayland, …Android??) the scale is the relationship between logical and physical pixels. In an "app go draw bigger stuff" sys
by floatboth 5y ago
In a "logical pixel" system (macOS, Wayland, …Android??) the scale is the relationship between logical and physical pixels. In an "app go draw bigger stuff" system like Windows, it's just the factor of how much bigger the UI elements should be. E.g. in Windows settings you can set 150% scale and all UI elements will be 1.5X as large.
And the "good" scale depends mostly on PPI of the monitor, as well as user preference. On a 27" 4K monitor, 1x scale is near unusable: the UI elements would be microscopic. Windows defaults to 150%, but 175% and 200% are fine as well (here's the user preference aspect).
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoWPF and some other windows APIs support resolution independence, so you don’t have an arbitrary size defined set as 1X. It seems weird that Apple hasn’t been able to do resolution independence yet, and there is some arbitrary 1X that is based on monitor tech that was popular this decade (and definitely not resolutions like 800 x 600 or 640 x 480 resolutions that we used in the 90s). Eventually, we should at least rename 2X to 1X and move on like we did before.
- floatboth 5y agoDirectly using physical PPI has basically never taken off anywhere. Everyone is using "arbitrary 1x" because designers and developers have never started using physical dimensions for digital UI elements. Most people speak in "96-dpi-ish logical pixels" because it's much more convenient. Everyone knows what 128px approximately looks like. No one measures UI elements with a physical ruler in millimeters.