[sugar] Playing with IDEs

[Albert Cahalan]

On Dec 25, 2007 6:28 PM, Bernardo Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org> wrote:
> Jeffrey Kesselman wrote:
>
> > Now this isnt to say that a minimum resolution cant work in the same
> > way it works on PCs... it works IF you can go full screen at that
> > resolution and if the game can request that resolution.
>
> It is impossible to provide a resolution other than the
> physical one on an LCD display without going through some
> kind of software scaling.
>
> Either we decide today that Sugar and its activities will
> only ever run on machines with 1200x900 displays, or we
> ask developers to make their activities scalable *somehow*.

OK, "*somehow*".

Minimum is 1200x900. Above that, it might be letterboxed or
have icons that are annoyingly tiny. Below that, it might crash.

The code should obviously be easy to adjust to take full
advantage of higher resolution. That may require a recompile
or new art.

> Artifacts are not that much of an issue with today's high
> DPI displays (and ours is really high!), true-color visuals,
> and any half-decent scaling algo. Try xmame at weird scaling
> factors to see what I mean.

Wrong. Moire effects and related problems can get you
no matter how high the resolution.

As an extreme example, consider a pattern of black and
white stripes each one pixel wide. Display 30005 stripes
on a display that is 30000 pixels wide. You'll get 5 very
noticable vertical stripes on your display.

The XO display does in fact have terrible artifacts. I can make
black/white patterns that look colored. See my test image if you
are in doubt. I really wish there were an easy way to show this
when using an emulator. In case anybody needs code to make
this happen, I have some. (C code to process a *.ppm file)