RE: For want of a better word

I don't think Dave intended the diagram to be an example, but merely an eye-catching 
picture to introduce his discussion. One wouldn't use image scaling to scale a page that 
was originally composed for a big screen, unless you're client also possessed pan/zoom 
abilities. And even then, one can get lost trying to understand a big page with pan/zoom. 
I've tried such technologies in the past, and while initially impressive, one soon gets 
"tunnel vision" sensations.

Scaling brings its own problems, and adaptation (possibly involving restructuring and 
other manipulations) might be the only viable approach.

BTW, I do share your concerns about adaptation possibly getting in the way, causing harm 
instead of doing good. For now, though, I'm pragmatic in my approach and content that 
adapation will do the best it can, and generally will do good instead of harm. The more 
we work on this, the better the result.

And another aside: the people who design fonts will tell you that you can't arbitrarily 
change the scaling of characters. The quality of the result depends on many factors, 
including the absolute pixel resolution, the pixel orientation, the number of curve 
points in the glyphs etc. So you might find that a font at 120% is not as legible as the 
same font at 112% on a particular device. This peculiarity varies according to the 
device, the font, the colours, the use of anti-aliasing, etc....

---Rotan

-----Original Message-----
From: Kai Hendry [mailto:hendry@cs.helsinki.fi]
Sent: 08 June 2004 13:35
To: Rotan Hanrahan
Cc: www-di@w3.org
Subject: Re: For want of a better word


On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 12:04:03PM +0100, Rotan Hanrahan wrote:
> "Proportional", in the context of text, is commonly used with respect to the size 
> of individual characters, generally with reference to their width.
> 
> "Scale" refers to gross adjustments to size with respect to an agreed base. Thus 
> "100%" would refer to the base size. There is no necessary implication that "100%" 
> means legible, though this would be a natural assumption.

So this picture:
http://www.w3.org/2000/10/DIAWorkshop/squeeze.gif

From:
http://www.w3.org/2000/10/DIAWorkshop/dia-realistic.html

Would be an example of a scalable webpage?

Received on Tuesday, 8 June 2004 09:03:59 UTC