Resolution independence

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Resolution independence in Mac OS X v10.4 in iWeb. Note the Apple logo is pixelated; it is rendered as a bitmap.

In computing, resolution independence is the concept that elements on a computer screen can be drawn at sizes independent from the pixel grid.

Apple has included some support for resolution independence in recent versions of Mac OS X, which can be demonstrated with the developer tools Quartz Debug, which includes a feature which allows the user to scale the interface. However, the feature is incomplete, as some icons will not show (such as in System Preferences) and certain bitmap GUI elements are not scaled smoothly.^[1] Another problem is that the scale factor is system-wide rather than screen-specific.

The Mac OS X 10.5.2 System Preferences dialog, non-scaled (left) and scaled (right)

Although not related to true resolution independence, some other operating systems use GUIs that are able to adapt to changed font sizes. Microsoft Windows 95 onwards used the Marlett TrueType font in order to scale some window controls (close, maximize, minimize, resize handles) to arbitrary sizes. The Windows Presentation Foundation from Microsoft, and consequently, WPF applications, are also designed to be resolution-independent, which means that Windows Vista also supports resolution independence. AmigaOS from version 2.1 (1990) was able to completely adapt its GUI to any font size (not only window controls as mentioned for Windows).

Blender uses its own resolution independent user interface.

[edit] See also

• Display PostScript
• Fresco (computing)

[edit] References