I find that resolutions beyond 1080p aren't worth the investment for me. Between my eyesight and the added strain on the GPU, high-res displays cost more in both money and hardware resources for a difference I literally cannot see. I prefer a display that matches my actual visual acuity rather than chasing specs I can't use.
I can absolutely tell the difference between 1080 and 4K. I was recently running the two side by side and the lower resolution monitor became a real pain point for me, to the point where I replaced it with a new one.
Obviously all experience is subjective and if 1080p is enough for you then that’s great. But there is a huge qualitative difference for many of us and 4K significantly improves our interaction with computers.
At 1080p I definitely need to drop antialiasing, and the need to drop AA means that there are probably some ways of potentially useful underlining that are impossible to do well because of not enough resolution to put them exactly where they should be given my preferred font size. I don't feel that would be worth it but can understand the improvement.
I absolutely agree with this - my first computer was an Atari ST hooked up to a TV, then a 386.
I spend my whole life staring at text. It might be email, it might be IRC, it might be a website, it might be a code editor, it might be an e-reader. I want that text to be the best rendered text possible, so I want them all to have the highest resolution displays that are reasonably practical.
I'm pretty happy with 5K at 27" for now, though :)
This is just the exact opposite of my experience. We must have different ideas of what the word "sharp" means.
Higher resolution -- in the form of higher DPI -- makes everything so much easier to read and discern to my aging eyesight. I'm on a 5K 27" display currently (217 dpi). Modern printers are 1200dpi and I remember when 300dpi was state of the art. We've got a long way to go before diminishing returns on monitors.
Comfortable distance to 27'' display is quite a bit larger than to an A4 sheet, and I am not sure whether 1200dpi is kind of «we actually use it for dithering but why not let it be used otherwise too».
To me there are two axes: crisp/sharp vs fuzzy and smooth vs pixelated. Bitmap fonts can be pixelated but they are pixel perfect sharp when rendered appropriately at their intended size. Anti-aliased fonts sacrifice sharp for smooth which looks bad (to me) at low dpi but much less of the problem with higher dpi.
I'd say that I keep about the same information density (possibly higher since my Emacs windows have the toolbar turned off and my task bar is relatively smaller.) But I love having more pixels for the text.
I should add that I do use antialiasing, but I go to great lengths to maximize the hinting (even on 4k) so that glyphs are aligned to the pixel grid and the vertices are snapped to it, glyph stems are even in width, etc. Basically where the glyphs are crisp and even and the antialiasing only affects the actually curved portions. I find that a good balance between the old bitmapped fonts that I grew up with like in the screenshot in TFA, and the benefits of modern displays.
And I do kind of like my 16:9 for side-by-side split-screen stuff, like Emacs on one half and a browser for reference in the other. Even on the shorter side, my 27in display is still much taller than the tiny old 4:3 monitors that I started with. And at a comfortable font size for my sitting distance, (cons (window-width) (window-height)) in Emacs when maximized and without splits tells me that I have 272 × 62 of character space in the main area - way more than the old 80 × 25 (or the 40 × 24 before that) that I'd started with as a kid.
To me one thing is for sure: it's the screen height that makes the difference.
I moved to a 16:10 screen and I can't help but grunt when I'm forced to work on 16:9. I don't plan to invest in an ultra-wide either. I definitely see the appeal, especially since I use scroll-able WMs like PaperWM or Niri. But in that way, windows going out of screen sooner are fine by me. I always looked like a lunatic to people when most of my work was done on laptops, with my taskbar on the left or right side of the screen. I can't iron it out, I'll shave every line of pixels I can if that means having more breathing room for my apps.
I do everything on a Thinkpad X1 laptop, with an ergonomic keyboard to have the screen higher and further away from my eyes. I use sway with two terminals opened, left and right and that’s enough for nearly everything. Vim/Neomutt/Offpunk: everything is fast and one shortcut away. Sometimes, I use 3 terminals (two smaller, tilled vertically). I switch to a new workspace for web browsing using Ibrewolf and that’s all.
But when I must use a "modern app" (such as the Signal client), I must run ii fullscreen because the information/density is very low. For some apps or some websites,my screen has not enough height. And I’m like: "who designed this hsit ? "
I dream of a vertical screen on my laptop, just for full screen offpunk/vim
If it is above your desk, maybe measuring what you need and getting the cheapest possible front-loaded storage furniture of that height, and sufficient area, and sturdiness to hold 2kg (it depends on your preference and local conditions, whether you want second-hand or new or built by yourself) could be enough (and not too much of a waste of space, given that it adds closed storage volume)?
I know, it drives me nuts when you're in a subpage of an app in a browswer, and there's a vertical bar for the OS, the window, the browser, the app, and the subpage, and half of them follow the modern trend of using too much whitespace, so the amount of usable screen space for the thing you're actually doing is less than half of your screen.
As far as vertical space while coding, I use a vertical monitor, 9x16 :-). It feels so spacious, you can see so much context around the code you're editing.
Some of the eccentric code layout in unifdef is because I was writing it on a laptop with a relatively small screen, and I wanted to be able to see the entire state machine at once.
For many years at work I used dual displays in portrait orientation, which allowed me to fit 4 tall windows slightly more than 80 characters wide in the X11 “fixed” 6x13 font. Or 8 shorter windows :-) These days I use a large 4k screen instead, with a slightly nicer font, but still usually 4 tall windows slightly more than 80 characters wide.
I think (other than the screen aspect ratio) [the 800x600 screenshot] displays nearly as much information as most people view on their 4k monitors, unless they have extremely large monitors or very sharp eyesight.
Huh? That's kind of hard for me to believe.
I don't think of myself as having unusually good eyesight. But on my laptop, I can easily display 4x as much text as their screenshot shows. My terminal is currently maximized but not fullscreen (taskbar, window title, and terminal tabs are all visible), and it shows twice as many lines with maybe three times the width; some of that horizontal real estate is wasted, though I just so happen to have a side-by-side diff in my terminal right now, so I am utilizing the majority of that width.
But I do share the author's sentiment. I don't think I could go back to 640x480 graphics or 80x25 text mode… yet I definitely didn't feel "cramped" back when that was what I was used to!
Yeah, Emacs on the screen I'm using currently displays 106 lines + 3 UI lines, plus the Gnome bar and WezTerm's tab chrome.
The screenshot shows 34 lines.
I don't really think I really get a lot of benefit from showing 100+ lines onscreen, and I think I wouldn't lose so much productivity with 25 lines, but definitely I still get productivity gains from having more than 34 lines.
This kind of reminds me of my work as an industrial UI programmer: we have a really big project incoming and performance of the UI is considered paramount. I'm of course taking the time to do some performance optimisations I've wanted to do for a few years, but honestly I'm generally not too concerned because there is only so much information that an operator can take in through a single screen. Even if the project is big (lots of machines, lots of control loops, lots of engineering work), the UI can only fit so much information before it becomes overwhelming and useless. The "size" of the UI does not scale at the same rate. (Though, there are other reasons why we do need the performance optimisations.)
doctor_eval | a month ago
I started my career using green screen text based terminals and I am grateful, every day, for every extra pixel I now have.
Teckla | a month ago
I find that resolutions beyond 1080p aren't worth the investment for me. Between my eyesight and the added strain on the GPU, high-res displays cost more in both money and hardware resources for a difference I literally cannot see. I prefer a display that matches my actual visual acuity rather than chasing specs I can't use.
doctor_eval | a month ago
I can absolutely tell the difference between 1080 and 4K. I was recently running the two side by side and the lower resolution monitor became a real pain point for me, to the point where I replaced it with a new one.
Obviously all experience is subjective and if 1080p is enough for you then that’s great. But there is a huge qualitative difference for many of us and 4K significantly improves our interaction with computers.
k749gtnc9l3w | a month ago
At 1080p I definitely need to drop antialiasing, and the need to drop AA means that there are probably some ways of potentially useful underlining that are impossible to do well because of not enough resolution to put them exactly where they should be given my preferred font size. I don't feel that would be worth it but can understand the improvement.
fourfourthree | a month ago
I absolutely agree with this - my first computer was an Atari ST hooked up to a TV, then a 386.
I spend my whole life staring at text. It might be email, it might be IRC, it might be a website, it might be a code editor, it might be an e-reader. I want that text to be the best rendered text possible, so I want them all to have the highest resolution displays that are reasonably practical.
I'm pretty happy with 5K at 27" for now, though :)
jfb | a month ago
I've been using computers as a professional for 35 years, and I am DYING for extra pixels.
jummo | a month ago
I like high dpi because it look sharper.
donio | a month ago
Not as sharp as the bitmap fonts we used on lower resolution displays.
I can't stand the fuzziness of anti-aliasing on lower resolution displays so I still go back to bitmaps fonts in some situations.
nugget | a month ago
This is just the exact opposite of my experience. We must have different ideas of what the word "sharp" means.
Higher resolution -- in the form of higher DPI -- makes everything so much easier to read and discern to my aging eyesight. I'm on a 5K 27" display currently (217 dpi). Modern printers are 1200dpi and I remember when 300dpi was state of the art. We've got a long way to go before diminishing returns on monitors.
k749gtnc9l3w | a month ago
Comfortable distance to 27'' display is quite a bit larger than to an A4 sheet, and I am not sure whether 1200dpi is kind of «we actually use it for dithering but why not let it be used otherwise too».
donio | a month ago
To me there are two axes: crisp/sharp vs fuzzy and smooth vs pixelated. Bitmap fonts can be pixelated but they are pixel perfect sharp when rendered appropriately at their intended size. Anti-aliased fonts sacrifice sharp for smooth which looks bad (to me) at low dpi but much less of the problem with higher dpi.
k749gtnc9l3w | a month ago
I use normal OpenType fonts but forbid antialiasing as much as possible. And then 1080p becomes fine.
Boojum | a month ago
I don't see myself ever going back to sub-4k.
I'd say that I keep about the same information density (possibly higher since my Emacs windows have the toolbar turned off and my task bar is relatively smaller.) But I love having more pixels for the text.
I should add that I do use antialiasing, but I go to great lengths to maximize the hinting (even on 4k) so that glyphs are aligned to the pixel grid and the vertices are snapped to it, glyph stems are even in width, etc. Basically where the glyphs are crisp and even and the antialiasing only affects the actually curved portions. I find that a good balance between the old bitmapped fonts that I grew up with like in the screenshot in TFA, and the benefits of modern displays.
And I do kind of like my 16:9 for side-by-side split-screen stuff, like Emacs on one half and a browser for reference in the other. Even on the shorter side, my 27in display is still much taller than the tiny old 4:3 monitors that I started with. And at a comfortable font size for my sitting distance,
(cons (window-width) (window-height))in Emacs when maximized and without splits tells me that I have 272 × 62 of character space in the main area - way more than the old 80 × 25 (or the 40 × 24 before that) that I'd started with as a kid.nanoni17728 | a month ago
To me one thing is for sure: it's the screen height that makes the difference.
I moved to a 16:10 screen and I can't help but grunt when I'm forced to work on 16:9. I don't plan to invest in an ultra-wide either. I definitely see the appeal, especially since I use scroll-able WMs like PaperWM or Niri. But in that way, windows going out of screen sooner are fine by me. I always looked like a lunatic to people when most of my work was done on laptops, with my taskbar on the left or right side of the screen. I can't iron it out, I'll shave every line of pixels I can if that means having more breathing room for my apps.
[OP] ploum | a month ago
I do everything on a Thinkpad X1 laptop, with an ergonomic keyboard to have the screen higher and further away from my eyes. I use sway with two terminals opened, left and right and that’s enough for nearly everything. Vim/Neomutt/Offpunk: everything is fast and one shortcut away. Sometimes, I use 3 terminals (two smaller, tilled vertically). I switch to a new workspace for web browsing using Ibrewolf and that’s all.
But when I must use a "modern app" (such as the Signal client), I must run ii fullscreen because the information/density is very low. For some apps or some websites,my screen has not enough height. And I’m like: "who designed this hsit ? "
I dream of a vertical screen on my laptop, just for full screen offpunk/vim
k749gtnc9l3w | a month ago
If you already use an external keyboard, who could stop you from putting your laptop vertically on a side and rotating the output correspondingly?
[OP] ploum | a month ago
The lack of an appropriate holder for such a position. But, indeed, that should theoritically be possible!
k749gtnc9l3w | a month ago
If it is above your desk, maybe measuring what you need and getting the cheapest possible front-loaded storage furniture of that height, and sufficient area, and sturdiness to hold 2kg (it depends on your preference and local conditions, whether you want second-hand or new or built by yourself) could be enough (and not too much of a waste of space, given that it adds closed storage volume)?
justinpombrio | a month ago
I know, it drives me nuts when you're in a subpage of an app in a browswer, and there's a vertical bar for the OS, the window, the browser, the app, and the subpage, and half of them follow the modern trend of using too much whitespace, so the amount of usable screen space for the thing you're actually doing is less than half of your screen.
As far as vertical space while coding, I use a vertical monitor, 9x16 :-). It feels so spacious, you can see so much context around the code you're editing.
fanf | a month ago
Some of the eccentric code layout in unifdef is because I was writing it on a laptop with a relatively small screen, and I wanted to be able to see the entire state machine at once.
For many years at work I used dual displays in portrait orientation, which allowed me to fit 4 tall windows slightly more than 80 characters wide in the X11 “fixed” 6x13 font. Or 8 shorter windows :-) These days I use a large 4k screen instead, with a slightly nicer font, but still usually 4 tall windows slightly more than 80 characters wide.
mhd | a month ago
I'd need a lot fewer if 4:3 displays were still around…
k749gtnc9l3w | a month ago
4:3 has more pixels than 16:9 for the same smaller side, though!
bitshift | a month ago
Huh? That's kind of hard for me to believe.
I don't think of myself as having unusually good eyesight. But on my laptop, I can easily display 4x as much text as their screenshot shows. My terminal is currently maximized but not fullscreen (taskbar, window title, and terminal tabs are all visible), and it shows twice as many lines with maybe three times the width; some of that horizontal real estate is wasted, though I just so happen to have a side-by-side diff in my terminal right now, so I am utilizing the majority of that width.
But I do share the author's sentiment. I don't think I could go back to 640x480 graphics or 80x25 text mode… yet I definitely didn't feel "cramped" back when that was what I was used to!
koala | a month ago
Yeah, Emacs on the screen I'm using currently displays 106 lines + 3 UI lines, plus the Gnome bar and WezTerm's tab chrome.
The screenshot shows 34 lines.
I don't really think I really get a lot of benefit from showing 100+ lines onscreen, and I think I wouldn't lose so much productivity with 25 lines, but definitely I still get productivity gains from having more than 34 lines.
aapoalas | a month ago
This kind of reminds me of my work as an industrial UI programmer: we have a really big project incoming and performance of the UI is considered paramount. I'm of course taking the time to do some performance optimisations I've wanted to do for a few years, but honestly I'm generally not too concerned because there is only so much information that an operator can take in through a single screen. Even if the project is big (lots of machines, lots of control loops, lots of engineering work), the UI can only fit so much information before it becomes overwhelming and useless. The "size" of the UI does not scale at the same rate. (Though, there are other reasons why we do need the performance optimisations.)
incanus | a month ago
I love that that FVWM screenshot features what looks like AfterStep and KDE of the era as well, as I ran such combinations at the time.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/incanus/3281445779/in/album-72157613842971230
fogleman | a month ago
I remember buying a 17" CRT monitor and thinking it was HUGE, like I had to move my head to see everything. LOL
o5r | a month ago
By my count about five
Relax | a month ago
Widescreen? 5x1? Or do you have some hipster monitor running at 2.5x2?
k749gtnc9l3w | a month ago
Five independent RGB notification lights around the voice-interface mini-brick?