Re: PNG vs. sub-pixel rendering PARTIAL SOLUTION!

On 7/10/2026 4:33 AM, Jim Diamond via ntg-context wrote:

>> so what is your screen resolution, 640x480 ?
> 
> **sigh** so many people talk about the number of pixels and not the pixel
> density.  640x480 would look very sharp indeed on a 5cm x 3cm screen.

so how many pixels per character in a 60 character line do you need

>>> My screen is about 141 DPI.  Not super high-res, but a whole lot better
>>> than those "crimes against humanity" 96 DPI screens.
> 
>> interesting is that 1920x1200 often (on windows) looks quite ok (but
>> depending on where i dock the laptop I have upto 4K so various resolutions
>> and sizes, these (even older) monitors run forever)
> 
> How big is that screen?  12"?  17.3"?

i have various sizes, most are older dell's (the sturdy black ones you 
can bey cheap second hand); the low energy newer 4K is seldom used 
because I work on a (some) 70 inch 4K screen (3 m distance) that my 
brother put here when i had eys issues (the problem there is that these 
never hava a real resolution in the sense that stuff shifts, this oled 
tech, so the edges can clip off)

the smallest screens are laptop (17 in) and a rpi screen (for the energy 
friendly setups and testing) ... zero changes for updating to some fancy 
4K laptop (tex is tiny to zero tech after all)

ok, i lied, the smallest screen is the phone but only tex on that for 
teasing

> Most non-SPR'ed text looks "fine" on my (1920x1080) screen.  But even at
> 141 DPI, SPR'ed text looks noticeably better to me.

well, one reason for using windows is that it always looked ok

> And, for reasons I don't understand (and maybe never will), Pagella looks
> awful in my ancient AR when it is not SPR'ed.  Really awful.  7x13 X fonts
> from 1985 look better.  Recently someone (another person who may not want
> his name connected to this thread) asked me about using Pagella for
> ANSS-CE.  I could not understand why anyone would want that, because it
> looked so bad.  But then I realized it looked bad in my AR when the page
> wasn't SPR'ed.

maybe no / less hinting .. who knows, i only use ubunto on linux as that 
is set up right wrt these things

>> You can always force a good old 320 horizontal pixel resolution experience:
> 
>> \startMPpage
>> triplet bm ; bm := loadbytemapfromfile(3, "PageLayout.png") ;
> 
>> lmt_filter [
>> source = 3,
>> target = 4,
>>        % filter = "sharpen:5",
>>        % filter = "gaussianblur",
>>        % filter = "sharpen:5,gaussianblur",
>> filter = "gaussianblur,sharpen:5",
>>      ] ;
> 
>> draw bytemap 4 xsized 20mm ;
>> \stopMPpage
> 
>> (and then spend an evening writing your own filters that you can plug in)
> 
> I can't possible imagine why I would ever want to, and yet I'll keep this
> message just in case that day comes.

come on, i know that you love these techniques ... everything 
interesting graphic is from the previous century so it must be familiar 
to you; it all being old means you can ask (google) ai to explain it if 
needed (so that you then know what wikipedia page and books / articles 
to read)

Hans


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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
               Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
        tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl
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