Re: style sheet scalability (was: Specifying style notation in <link>)

Jacob Cazzell (jacobcaz@inetdirect.net)
Tue, 5 Dec 1995 13:36:09 -0500


>> Legibility should normally be increased with a larger display area,
>> assuming you don't get make the image too big for your display ;), as
>> long as the number of pixels you use on your screen is an integral
>> multiple of the number in the bitmap.

This would work although it would still be a bit rough. It would look far
better than if the enlargment is *not* a multiple of the bitmap.

>OK. I'm confused here. It has been my experience that if you blow up
>a GIF image too much, the image loses quality due to the face that
>the image is a bunch of pixels being drawn absolutly. Text gets
>"jaggies" quickly under this scenario. That is why Postscript
>uses algorythms to scale text larger instead of just blowing up
>the pixels. I would assume that this would be true for many other
>image types as well. Highly ditherable but not already dithered
>images would benefit from being blown up better than others, but
>images that the designer dithers suffer from scaling problems.

Sure - postscript is a great fix to the 'jaggies' but there are other
methods of getting rid of 'em -- Photoshop is a great example of how to
enlarge and smooth at the same time. Anti-alias it! PS can use several
different schemes to "smooth" images and they all look pretty good. What
about a built in anti-aliaser? Dithering doesn't do much with how the
edges look -- it's a method for reducing colors or using fewer colors to
approximate a graident (or more colors than are present).

>Can you explain "how" legibility increases with significant size
>enlargement?
>

If using a bitmap it won't -- it will only appear to be smoother with
significant size enlargments of a multiple of the bitmap size... Whew, say
that five times fast! ;)

=B-) Jacob Cazzell

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|Jacob Cazzell                       | My name is Ozymandias, king of |
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