in: afternoon coffee
out: morning coffee
in: capitalizing sentences
Out: "definitely", "literally"
In: "presume"
Out: "assume"
In: Dominion
Out: MtG
In: Revit
Out: AutoCAD
In: mortgage rates under 5%
Out: rates over 5%
12 August 2010
08 June 2010
Y'another iPhone (or a Bit on Hi-Res Displays)
Thank you, Apple, for still making impressive improvements on your devices and software. Meanwhile, back here in reality, we'll all continue suffering through AT&T's contemptible service.
With that out of my system, I wanted to blab a bit about Apple's "retina display." Besides being a brow-raising brand, it does embody what's so awesome behind the display. At 326 pixels per inch, it opens the doors for unique human/computer interaction. Magazines, brochures, and just about anything that's printed and viewed from one's hands uses a printing resolution of around 300 dots per inch. One can deduct that Apple's new display thus offers a viewing experience on par with the printed world.
What's so cool about this? Digital ink, as they call it. I know Steve thinks any sort of interface between a human and computer that uses a "stylus" equals failure. (He may want to reconnect with Apple's huge following of creative professionals.) To this day I would never have suggested that digital pens would make a good input device, solely because of our displays' resolutions. Digital ink fails from the start if a person can differentiate the pixels. But with a display at Apple's RD's 326 ppi, we can draw digital lines and curves, and paint with brushes and colors at arm's length without the distraction of zooming, pixels, or resolution. A wall is being torn down between creative professionals and being productive.
Of course, the iPhone is still just a 3.5" screen, so that in itself is a barrier. But it won't be long before Apple will offer these displays at workable sizes.
I come from a heavy architectural background, which stemmed into my current occupation as a structural engineer. We work daily with line drawings. Back in the printed world, line drawings need to be kept vector to be printed well. Rasterized, such drawings need to hit 600 or higher dpi to keep the human eye happy with what it sees printed. However, we continually need to convey information to the rest of a design team: the architects, the structural engineers, the mechanical engineers, the contractors, the owners, the developers, and the multitude of sub-consultants for a project. This industry has been slow to acclimate to a digital world when it comes to coordination and sharing information. One of the barriers here has been the process of marking up drawings. For several reasons, it's still usually best to print a drawing, mark it up with good ol' real-life pens and pencils, scan the thing back in, then email it away. With a display at 326 ppi matching at least a letter-sized page (8.5" x 11"), the process of sharing information on drawings could be drastically more efficient, clearer, and faster. Give me a display hitting 11"x17", and we're getting gold.
So, Apple: When can we see your spiffy Retina Display at something larger than pocket-sized?
With that out of my system, I wanted to blab a bit about Apple's "retina display." Besides being a brow-raising brand, it does embody what's so awesome behind the display. At 326 pixels per inch, it opens the doors for unique human/computer interaction. Magazines, brochures, and just about anything that's printed and viewed from one's hands uses a printing resolution of around 300 dots per inch. One can deduct that Apple's new display thus offers a viewing experience on par with the printed world.
What's so cool about this? Digital ink, as they call it. I know Steve thinks any sort of interface between a human and computer that uses a "stylus" equals failure. (He may want to reconnect with Apple's huge following of creative professionals.) To this day I would never have suggested that digital pens would make a good input device, solely because of our displays' resolutions. Digital ink fails from the start if a person can differentiate the pixels. But with a display at Apple's RD's 326 ppi, we can draw digital lines and curves, and paint with brushes and colors at arm's length without the distraction of zooming, pixels, or resolution. A wall is being torn down between creative professionals and being productive.
Of course, the iPhone is still just a 3.5" screen, so that in itself is a barrier. But it won't be long before Apple will offer these displays at workable sizes.
I come from a heavy architectural background, which stemmed into my current occupation as a structural engineer. We work daily with line drawings. Back in the printed world, line drawings need to be kept vector to be printed well. Rasterized, such drawings need to hit 600 or higher dpi to keep the human eye happy with what it sees printed. However, we continually need to convey information to the rest of a design team: the architects, the structural engineers, the mechanical engineers, the contractors, the owners, the developers, and the multitude of sub-consultants for a project. This industry has been slow to acclimate to a digital world when it comes to coordination and sharing information. One of the barriers here has been the process of marking up drawings. For several reasons, it's still usually best to print a drawing, mark it up with good ol' real-life pens and pencils, scan the thing back in, then email it away. With a display at 326 ppi matching at least a letter-sized page (8.5" x 11"), the process of sharing information on drawings could be drastically more efficient, clearer, and faster. Give me a display hitting 11"x17", and we're getting gold.
So, Apple: When can we see your spiffy Retina Display at something larger than pocket-sized?
30 April 2010
styles, publishing
I've been doing more and more InDesign layouts at work for our architect clients. We often assemble these for the same architects, who do send us "templates." Unfortunately, these templates have formatting styles spottily applied and often existing with overrides, so on the last project, I spent a decent chunk of time to define my own cleaned up, reliable styles.
I won't claim to be an InDesign expert, so I ran into a new task today: grabbing the styles from the last document. It being an Adobe product, I believed it might be a simple copy-paste job similar to Photoshop layer styles, but it's a bit different in InDesign. You essentially have to "import" the styles from the other doc. From either of styles palette menus, clicking on "Load Character/Paragraph Styles..." lets you do this. It's quite straight forward from there on out.
Now this got me thinking about WYSIWYG editors and how the latest version of Word has made Styles a much more obvious tool to users. Unfortunately, I'd bet that the majority of people still have no idea how to use them properly. I would suggest that part of the problem is that the separation between content and styling doesn't fit the mold of a wysiwyg editor, and is better understood through a typesetting software such as LaTeX. But writing in that looks like scary code...
These are just random thoughts of the moment. I've heard rumor that I might be sharing my InDesign knowledge within my office, a scary thought; teaching InDesign to engineers... I wonder if an approach focusing on the separation of styles and content might be of interest to such an audience.
I won't claim to be an InDesign expert, so I ran into a new task today: grabbing the styles from the last document. It being an Adobe product, I believed it might be a simple copy-paste job similar to Photoshop layer styles, but it's a bit different in InDesign. You essentially have to "import" the styles from the other doc. From either of styles palette menus, clicking on "Load Character/Paragraph Styles..." lets you do this. It's quite straight forward from there on out.
Now this got me thinking about WYSIWYG editors and how the latest version of Word has made Styles a much more obvious tool to users. Unfortunately, I'd bet that the majority of people still have no idea how to use them properly. I would suggest that part of the problem is that the separation between content and styling doesn't fit the mold of a wysiwyg editor, and is better understood through a typesetting software such as LaTeX. But writing in that looks like scary code...
These are just random thoughts of the moment. I've heard rumor that I might be sharing my InDesign knowledge within my office, a scary thought; teaching InDesign to engineers... I wonder if an approach focusing on the separation of styles and content might be of interest to such an audience.
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