Re: Expanding Focus Capacity (was Re: Please Help w/purchase.)

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article pubpc1@library.ucla.edu writes...

>>>Mitchell Spector wrote,
>>>>     Except that the Macintosh Plus has a higher vertical resolution
>>>> (the GS cannot do true WYSIWYG at 640x200) and has had more recent
>>>> System Software support than the GS. Otherwise, I agree fully--the
>>>> GS is more of a functional machine (once upgraded) than a Mac Plus,
>>>> especially in terms of multimedia applications and games.
>>>
>>>It is WYSIWYG in that you can see what's going on the GUI.
>>
>>    Yes, exactly. The whole point behind WYSIWYG is just that--What
>>You SEE Is What You Get. You can see *exactly* what your document
>>will look like printed out, _on the screen_, without having to go
>>through the process of waiting for the printer or wasting paper
>>and ink/toner either, just to see each minor change.
>
>If you want to see *exactly* what you get, then for sure the Mac
>Plus was *not* WYSIWYG.  If you look at the way it renders fonts,
>the edges are slightly frayed.

    Obviously, but you still get a respectable translation of what
will eventually appear on paper. That is what WYSIWYG means, being
able to get a good enough idea from looking at the screen _without_
having to fall back to a printed page for perspective.

>You have to compare the GS output on the same sized monitor!
>Hook up an Apple IIc 9-inch screen to the composite output of the
>GS and suddenly everything *seems* sharper, rectangular pixels or
>not, because the dots are scrunched together more (greater dot density).

    I took your advise and connected up my 9" Monitor IIc to the GS.
The screen is sharper and better defined, but that is often the case
with monochrome displays (look at the 80 columns text in ProTERM for
example, notice how you can clearly see the gaps between characters
such as MWmw#$&~"--yet on the AppleColor RGB they appear fuzzy and
almost seem to be solid shapes with no spaces). I would attribute it
to the high bandwidth monochrome screens use, not too mention there
is no tri-dot pattern (dot pitch) for each pixel, so other than scan-
lines, all graphics and objects appear smooth and solid.

    I also looked at TrueType fonts in AppleWorks GS using the IIc
monochrome display. Certainly the image is smaller, but the aspect
ratio is most definitely still distorted. Fonts appear taller and
more narrow than they do on paper, everything is still scretched.
The reason is obvious--your *still* sending out 640 x 200 pixels!
It is ridiculous we're even debating this.

>>    WYSIWYG is also important if you don't have a printer connected,
>>which is the case with some people who have their documents printed
>>by a commercial printing service (or do their project at home, yet
>>do their printing at work/school).
>
>To tell you the truth, even a modern Mac or PC monitor going at
>800x600 mode can't do "perfect WYSIWYG" according to your
>definition.  Just type a few lines in WordPerfect or notepad and
>print out the results.  Comparing the two, the screen output is
>tilted to the bold side and the edges of the fonts are frayed.
>The fonts also seem scrunched up somewhat.

    Sure, if you want to look at things through a magnify glass
or microscope. By your definition, no computer in the world can
do WYSIWYG--they all just have you guessing _wildly_ what your
output is going to look like, right? Wrong.

    The truth is 640x200 *CANNOT* do true WYSIWYG, that is just
plain and simple fact--whether your using an IBM with CGA card,
Commodore 128 or Apple IIgs. Other computers with reasonible
aspect ratios *CAN* do true WYSIWYG. Perhaps not in the most
literal sense where you could measure things in 1/100th of
a millimeter, but enough were your _not guessing_ about how
a font or graphic will appear in size or shape on paper. The
GS does have you guessing or using your imagination a lot to 
say the very least.

>>>True, it is not perfect because of the resolution, but no
>>>worse than what was happening with the Mac Plus.  It had
>>>less horizontal resolution than the GS
>>
>>    The vertical resolution on the GS makes this almost moot.
>>You have an aspect ratio problem with 640x200, the width is
>>is about 3.5 times greater than the height--this gives you a
>>distorted and stretched image! Notice how TrueType fonts on
>>the GS screen are much taller and more narrow than they come
>>on the actual printed page?
>
>That's why I have the vertical scale control of the RGB monitor
>set to squish the screen vertically.  The dots are now almost
>square and the spaces between scan lines are gone.  :)

    Well I have to tell you, that is an absurd solution to the
problem--especially since your going to distort the image much
further. You do understand that still won't give you WYSIWYG,
or at least in a fashion that is comparable to systems with a
higher vertical resolution.

    What's next, suggesting putting magnets on certain areas
of monitor to increase your color depth? Heh. ;-)

>>    The Macintosh Plus used 512x384, which is more balanced
>>than the GS's 640x200. This at least offered true WYSIWYG,
>>or pretty close to it. We're looking at 4:3 vs 5:12.
>
>If modern Macs and PCs at 800x600 can't do WYSIWYG, the Mac
>Plus could not.  Like I said, try squishing the monitor controls
>or, if comparing to a Mac Plus, use an Apple IIc monitor on
>the GS to increase the dot density.

    Right...there is no such thing as WYSIWYG at any resolution.
Or you could stop trying to twist facts and admit that the IIgs
has a serious hardware limitation for graphics. The only way to
fix it is with a Second Sight card (or VOC with interlaced mode)
but as you know, nothing supports them for utilizing 640x400 or
higher.

>>    While the Macintosh Plus may be superior for producing
>>true WYSIWYG for page layout, graphic design and fonts in
>>a word processing document--it comes no where near the GS
>>for overall look of graphics obviously. You have can have
>>256 color screens, choosen from a 12-bit palette. The Mac
>>of that time was just showing pixels either on or off (on
>>that tiny 9" B&W screen).
>
>I think you are placing too much emphasis on aspect ratio.
>Such things can be compensated for.  If you look at the GS
>output through a 9-inch monitor, rather than the normal RGB,
>you won't see much of a difference from what the Mac Plus
>produced with its 9-inch screen, except that you can switch
>to 320 mode and get good looking graphics compared to the
>Plus.

    I hope your kidding, this is just plain absurd. Your trying
to rationalize that the aspect ratio problem *doesn't* exist
now, simply because it means admitting the Apple IIgs is lesser
than other machines in the area of page-layout, word-processing
and graphic design. I'm sorry, but it is--why can't you see that?

    Using a smaller monitor or screwing up the vertical-size
control of the regular display will not help, any more than
playing with magnets will increase the number of colors on
screen. This is as silly as telling me you can increase the
animation speed in a game by recording a play session on my
VCR, then watching it back in fast-forward search mode--then
claiming speed is not a problem on the GS! :-)

>>>> >My system is a 13.75MHz Zip accelerated GS (faster than my
>>>> >25Mhz '486 PC in most tasks...you can't compare MHz accross
>>>>
>>>>     Your comparing a 486SX-25 laptop, I think if you compared
>>>> the same GS to an old 486DX-33 desktop machine the same might
>>>> not be true. ;-)
>>>
>>>I'm talking about my own 486, which I previously acknowledged
>>>was somewhere between the performance of an i486 and i386
>>>(it is a Texas Instrument 486SLC-25 chip).
>>
>>    This is the first time you've actually mentioned what your
>>"486" chipset consisted of. Let me clear up some facts here:
>>The 486SLC in reality is no more than a 386SX, with two minor
>>exceptions--it has some 486 instruction sets and contains 16K
>>of L1 cache. On the down side though, it only has a 16-bit
>>data bus and a 24-bit address range (it is limited to 16 MB).
>>It is not even a true 32-bit processor.
>
>According to "The Indispensable Hardware Handbook" published by
>Addison-Wesley, the 486SLC has performance somewhere between
>the i386 and i486.  _If_ they are correct, claiming that it is
>just a 386 is shortchanging it somewhat.  I have also used a
>_real_ 368SX-25 desktop and it was not the equal of my 486SLC.
>I tried running Sim IIe on both computers.  On the 486SLC,
>the results were _much_ better than on the 386SX.

    Calling it a 386SX-25 may be short changing it somewhat, yes,
since it does have 486 instructions in the chip and there is 16K
of internal L1 cache. I think you've mentioning running Window 95
on it, and that will not run on anything lower than a 386DX. So
in some ways it does fall between the 386 and 486--but then there
is that 16-bit data bus and 24-bit address bus which make it very
similar to the 286. All in all though, if you really want to have
it classified it is a 386 processor, *not* a 486. That was the
whole point I was trying to get across in the first place.

    You can continue comparing it to the Apple IIgs, but remember
your comparing a 386 processor. In some ways I suppose the 486SLC
is similar to the NEC V30 in the PC-Transporter, since that is
more or less an 8086 processor with some 186 instructions in it
(you could say that falls between the 8086 and 186).

>You must have not been paying attention, I'm saying it does
>not matter.  According to theory, you can capture a maximum
>frequency of 1/2 the sampling rate.  That means that even
>though a CD player is sampling at 44kHz, the maximum signal
>frequency it can carry is 22kHz.  What's above 22kHz is
>NOISE.  That 26kHz low pass filter is only filtering out
>NOISE.  You have to playback at 52kHz (double the 26kHz low
>pass filter) for the filter to have the effect you are
>thinking about.

    So now there is no such thing is WYSIWYG, and there is
no difference between 22 kHz and 44 kHz. Uhuh. The way I
see things, your trying to make excuses about the graphic
and sound limitations of the GS so you can still compare
it favoribly to modern computers.

>First, sample a sound on your PC at 44kHz and 16 bit.
>Then sample the same sound at 44kHz and 8 bit.  Can you
>hear a difference?  Probably, but it is subtle.  Take
>the 44kHz 8 bit sound to the GS and play it.  There is
>absolutely no difference in quality between this playback
>and the playback of the PC (the 44kHz 8 bit one, that is).

    So essential your trying to tell me sound or music recorded
at 16-bit, 44 kHz--and the same sound recorded at 8-bit, 22 kHz,
will sound more or less identical in quality?

    Are you also saying the GS is closely comparable to a CD-player
for audio, is this what your claiming? If you are, then this debate
is starting is shift from a technical discussion to a comedic one.

>>>Look up "Dirt Cheap Drives" in the index.  A couple of
>>>months ago, this Nevada based outfit was selling 800MB
>>>Quantum Go-Drive refurbs for $59.
>>
>>    Well that's a bit more than "literally pennies". :-)
>>Still, sounds like it would make a good deal if you
>>already own a Focus HardCard and require huge amounts
>>of storage (well, huge if your using it with a IIgs,
>>otherwise 800 MB is fairly small in a PC :).
>
>Now I never said "literally" pennies, did I?  :)

    Sorry, your right, but you did say--"can be had for
pennies these days". When someone says that, I think of
a component costing 50 cents, or maybe a dollar or two
at most (for example I often tell people 256Kx1 DRAMs
cost pennies these days, because they literally do when
286 boards filled with them can be obtained for $1/ea).

    One of those 2.5" hardrives cost over 6,000 pennies!
At that point, it makes better sense to start counting
your price in dollars, it's less deceiving. ;-)

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca