Re: Aspect ratios

In article <nri...@netcom.com> nri...@netcom.com (Net Rider) writes:
>My monitor has an adjustment for this.  I thought all better ones did.

Sometimes they are a little hard to find, but, yes, you can alter it for most
terminals.  That's the point.  What do you have it set to?  For example
a PC has a fixed number of settings for columns and lines.  CGA, MCGA, VGA,
and Hercules can usually do 80/25 80/50 and 40/25.  On a 4:5 ratio monitor
they should have aspect ratios of 2.56, 1.28, and 1.28 respectively.
However I and others have measured 1.0, 1.36, 2.0, and 2.4.  I have measured
2.0 on a portable with plasma EGA, which is logical because the pixels are
probably square; but also on a SVGA monitor where they can be all sorts of
things.

I guess some of this amazing diversity comes from the number of ways you can
tune your monitor.  You can set it so...
(1) It goes to the edges,
(2) It doesn't go quite to the edges because the glass gets a bit thick there,
(3) The characters are square,
(4) Circles appear round/ diagonals are at 45 degrees,
(5) So you don't see the bottom-left corner is actually a bit green,
(6) So you can use some of the other display modes on  your multisync monitor
    without having to twiddle it,
(7) So the characters/pixels come out a certain size,

...not forgetting of course...

(0) I never knew you could set it.  It came from the factory like that.

There seems to be more of a consensus on what proportions look good in a 
Courier-type font....

1.7 - HP deskjet default font

1.8 - Sun sparc terminal.
      Sun sparc laser printer.

1.9 - PC windows Courier New font.

2.0 - PC windows Fixedsys font.

2.1 - vt<nnn> terminal 80-col mode.
      Macintosh running Zterm.

2.2 - vt<nnn> terminal 80-col mode.

Then unless we include all these PC ones there is then a big gap until...

3.5 - vt<nnn> 132-column mode.

There are many pictures (especially of the giftoascii sort) that look
wrong on my terminal.  I don't want to set standards or anything like that,
but if we knew that most people saw circles as circles if they were done
with an aspect ratio of 2.0, then that would be a Good Thing.

In some ways I prefer replies from those who don't know too much about 
how to soup-up their monitor character set, but just use a typical setting.
There will always be the oddball who can read their mail using the PC
30-line modes 11 & 12 you can't normally get, or the extended VGA 132/43,
132/25, or 100/75 sets, but what the heck.

Any X-term readers out there?  What's your character aspect ratio as measured
off the screen? Thanks.
-- 
.adBBba. Ba.   A             "W"""""b   ,B B.    B         Richard Kirk
"'B  ,B" _`S"b B.Bb .dBb .B dBBb.   B .A"  _"B. JB.aPb     ra...@crosfield.co.uk
  BaP"  .B B .JB? B B. B.BBV B  B   BK.    B  BP'BCdP'     
 .B `~VaP' VBP B  B? VB?' B  `bd'   B "~aaBP  B  B "Vbaa   0442-340000-3361

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