[cairo] Write ups on Microsoft Avalon

Andrew Johnson acjgenius at earthlink.net
Tue May 18 15:35:31 PDT 2004


On Tue, 2004-05-18 at 17:11, Owen Taylor wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-05-18 at 15:43, Keith Packard wrote:
> > Around 11 o'clock on May 18, Owen Taylor wrote:
> > 
> > > Most of the lines on my ~125dpi display are 1 pixel and I think should be
> > > 1 pixel.
> > 
> > That, at least, is debatable.  Certainly with the old X wide lines, using 
> > anything other than '0' width was a visual disaster.  But, at 125 dpi, I 
> > believe the default 2-pixel width is generally a good idea, especially 
> > when anti-aliased (1-pixel anti-aliased lines are pretty hard to see on a 
> > monitor these days).
> 
> How many lines do I have on my display that are not horizontal or 
> vertical? I see two - the two 45-degree lines of the WM close button.
> If I have a diagram or vector art occupying most of my screen then
> double pixel lines probably aren't issue, but for focus lines, 
> accelerator underlines, etc, a single pixel thickness is still
> desirable.

And don't forget general widgets appearance - edges, toolbar/menu
spacers etc, not only would thicker lines be undesirable but would look
distorted, dependant on theme for example, because edges are not just
one line, but usually a composite of multiple side-by-side one pixel
lines to create a specific appearance, and the theme itself often
decides how this will look(aka not code that can be "fixed").

Also on the issue of turning off AA, there are places where it would be
desirable for specific appearances, or to be able to disable on a
situational basis esp again, for non-diagonal lines, like in the same
issue as above, for certain aspects of widget drawing, in some
situations AA might be desirable on edges, in others it might not,
simply for specific theming purposes, where falling back on predefined
pixmaps simply doesn't make sense. 

Andrew







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