Re: Making pt a non-physical unit

On Jan 20, 2010, at 4:21 PM, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote:

> If I am designing for a specific device, I can know its  
> characteristics and default settings, and do the scaling myself.

That's the idea behind using 'zoom' this way, to do the scaling  
myself, in one step, while still using familiar scales or possibly  
adapting existing content. Do you mean I should measure in increments  
of half-pixels or quarter-pixels if the resolution approaches 190 or  
380 dpi? Do I even get the same results, or are there rounding  
problems and parts of CSS that are expecting pixels to be in integers  
(I'm not where I can research that question myself at the moment, but  
it seems like there may be)?

> Why do we need something in a spec. that is covering the 'arbitrary  
> interoperability' problem.

Are alternate applications of CSS not supposed to be considered?  
Anyway, I also mentioned user style sheets, which could be a sane way  
of dealing with a UA that constantly makes incorrect assumptions about  
my output device.

> On Jan 21, 2010, at 7:10 , Brad Kemper wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Jan 20, 2010, at 12:48 PM, Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com 
>> > wrote:
>>
>>>> There may also be times when the UA's choice of zoom level does  
>>>> not match what the author wants. This could happen in cases where  
>>>> the content is made especially for the output device but the UA  
>>>> cannot guess correctly about the resolution of the device or the  
>>>> appropriate zoom factor to use. For instance, an HTML-based HUD  
>>>> on sunglasses that are very high resolution, or an overlay for a  
>>>> high resolution movie that is being projected onto an IMAX  
>>>> screen. Thus, if there was a property to control that, then the  
>>>> author could use it, or (for more general Web content) it could  
>>>> be put into a user style sheet.
>>>
>>> In both of these cases, however,  the zoom setting would relative to
>>> something which is beyond what the designer could forecast (e.g.the
>>> monitor dpi and the UA default zoom),
>>
>> Au contraire. I said "in cases where the content is made especially  
>> for the output device", as opposed to general Web content. So the  
>> author would know the monitor dpi and UA default zoom choice. Keep  
>> in mind that CSS is not just for Web pages.
>>
>> And in the case of user style sheets, these would be used where the  
>> user did know that the page scaling was always wrong when viewing  
>> Web pages in his browser.
>
> David Singer
> Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.
>

Received on Thursday, 21 January 2010 02:38:44 UTC