Digital BW, The Print

Hi Austin,

I'm going to divide some of the responses to make them more readable.

> 
> Yeah, just like monitors are talked about in terms of "resolution", which
> means something completely different from the use of resolution to the rest
> of the world in every other application that uses that term.   Hum.

I do remember you having a beef with this before.  I declined to answer then
because I think its a moot point.  But, I think its an illustration of an overly
rigid application of technical concepts on your part.  The word "resolution" has
been a consistent "concept" for a long time.  Its basically the measure of discerning
information over the spacial dimension.  In the analog film and optics world, 
resolution is usually talked about in lines per mm or some equivalent.  When the
digital world came about, this wasn't the most convenient units so pixels
per inch seems to have taken over.  Same basic concept but very different units.
Now comes monitors.  Pretty much everybody associated with monitors wants
to refer to "how much stuff is on the screen".   From day one, the users, the
manufacturers, the buyers, the software, the hardware all cares most about 
how many pixels are there.  The term resolution has universally been used to
mean this is this context.  They could have all instead used pixels per inch to
spec monitors but they felt the unit "pixels per monitor" was much more useful
and informative.  

To me a consistent usage, in a clear cut context, with no
confusion, defines the term for that context. Arguing that people a wrong
when they are the ones in complete agreement is a misplaced effort.

> 
> > It doesn't matter how good the idea is,
> > I just can't imagine how it makes sense to use an existing term.  We have
> > to talk to other people, use other technologies, read specs, you name it.
> > Let's make it easy to communicate with the outside world!
> 
> Agreed, but that doesn't mean the term isn't being misused ;-)
> 
> Austin

Roy