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<p>Hi Milan,</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2026-06-04 1:46 PM, Milan Lajtos via
Cuis-dev wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CBCF20FB-9FB9-4B29-AC5C-BC4B9DB6CAED@me.com">
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<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body">Hello Juan!<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<p>What I think is more important, though, is to be careful
with the assertions made. Youtube keeps videos for a long
time, way long after any context is lost. Talk that
suggest Cuis not having usability, not supporting emoji,
calling it "the damn thing", etc. will be taken literally
by many. The best place to be harsh is here. Being polite
is welcome, but if someone is not polite in the mail list,
they will get an appropriate answer, that will also be
part of the thread in the archive. No harm done then. But
in media where context and responses may not be available,
and may reach a wider uninformed audience, it is best to
be careful with words.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>My aim is to improve Cuis – part of that is pointing out
the bad parts while fixing them. If I don't know how to
improve something, I tend not to criticize. </div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Good. Please re read my last sentence above. In order for you to
be able to improve Cuis (and not just fork it into a separate
project), we need a sane communication. I hope we'll get there.</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CBCF20FB-9FB9-4B29-AC5C-BC4B9DB6CAED@me.com">
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body">
<div>The hard fact is that emoji support is currently
non-existent – and that is okay! Maybe there is someone that
is into emojis and will fix it. But without an explicit
information that emoji/TTF support is not 100%, how can we
know what is a problem?</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>"non-existent" and "not 100%" are completely different things.
This is a fresh Cuis image using the default font. I don't claim
it is "100%" but it is not fair to say "non-existent" either.</p>
<p><img moz-do-not-send="false"
src="cid:part1.D900CL7k.j0SuQ6jS@cuis.st" alt="" width="1424"
height="744"></p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CBCF20FB-9FB9-4B29-AC5C-BC4B9DB6CAED@me.com">
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body">
<div><br>
</div>
<div>"Obsolete the damn thing!" is a direct quote from Alan Kay
about Smalltalk.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CBCF20FB-9FB9-4B29-AC5C-BC4B9DB6CAED@me.com">
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body">
<div>The video has an explicit "May 2026" badge, and comments
are open. My understanding of things will improve, which is a
great segue to...</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<p>Well, of course the root problem here is that we don't
have any indication of the real size of the pixels we're
given. So we should improve, but we don't have real
guarantees of what "ten pixels" really mean. For instance,
set Cuis to Full Screen and the compare `Display extent`
with whatever the OS says about display resolution, and
with the phisical specs of the display. Apple made a big
mess here. And AFAIK no desktop OS has a good api to query
what's the actual size of a pixel.</p>
<p>In any case, using #hostOSScaleFactor seems reasonable.
One way is do what you did. Another one is to scale your
morphs, perhaps when opening. Another is what most Cuis
tools do, call `FontFamily defaultPointSize` to adapt size
of elements to user preference. Scaling the whole world is
possible too, although we generally prefer to size
elements with `FontFamily defaultPointSize`, and drawing a
scale = 1. This gives best drawing performance.</p>
</div>
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<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div>I read up on the scaling problem. From what I read, I
assume that the your intention is to have UI that has
dimensions based on the font size. So when you increase the
base font size, the UI scales with that. And font size takes
`hostOSScaleFactor` already into account.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Which means to create a rect around the text, e.g. a
button, you are setting the padding that has some fraction
of line height, which is some multiply of font size. This
becomes tangled pretty fast.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The more direct approach is to factor out the font size.
That way you can use points (logical pixels) for the size of
UI (including the font size) and have independent "zoom
factor" that can be user-definable. And then the system
would compute size of 1pt as `hostOSScaleFactor *
zoomFactor` in physical pixels.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This is just describing what is sometimes called
"density-independent pixel" (dp on Android), or "effective
pixel" (epx on Windows UWP). On Apple platforms it is just
called "point". The independent zoom factor corrects for
inability to know physical dimensions of the screen and
viewing distance. So you can tune the base font size to
be ~0.33°.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes. Something like that can be done.</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CBCF20FB-9FB9-4B29-AC5C-BC4B9DB6CAED@me.com">
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body"><br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<p>I tried to keep the API small and relevant, and expand it
as needs arise. I think that blend modes are not really
necesary if we handle transparency of stroke and fill
colors correctly. Do we have a use case for a "blend mode"
feature?</p>
<p>WRT gradients, something similar happens. They are part
of the SVG standard, but they make everything look like it
is over 20 years old and they are not very used nowadays.
Is there any actual need for them? I think having textures
would be much more useful and interesting.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body">Keeping the API small
is great! Blend modes are complementary to alpha blending.
When I was designing semi-transparent menus, I wanted to
increase the contrast against background, while keeping the
opacity intact. Why blend modes are useful: <a
href="https://www.makingsoftware.com/chapters/blending-modes"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.makingsoftware.com/chapters/blending-modes</a></div>
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body">Gradient fills
(linear, radial, mesh, etc.) are ubiquitous in visual design.
:)</div>
</div>
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<p>Good.</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CBCF20FB-9FB9-4B29-AC5C-BC4B9DB6CAED@me.com">
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body">
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body"><br>
</div>
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<div>
<p> </p>
<p>No real need to read the paper, although it is good to
read it. All you need is to render the same SVG file with
Cuis and any other renderer and compare.</p>
<p>The filter widh used is configurable. Edit
VectorEngineWithPluginWholePixel >>
#defaultAntiAliasingWidth, then resize the main Cuis
window for the change to take effect. Instead of 1.6,
something like 4 will be much smoother. Try 1.2. It still
won't be too pixelated, but it will be closer to what
other renderers do. 1.0 will be still crispier, but
pixellation starts to be quite visible.</p>
<p>Play with the VectorEngine 'experiments' class side
methods.</p>
<p>If you're really interested in this stuff, after a quick
read of the paper you can start hacking
VectorEngineSmalltalk. I promise you'll have a lot of fun.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body">Oh, the filter width
is configurable! I am gonna play with it.. Thank you for the
pointer!</div>
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body"><br>
</div>
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<div>
<p>Most likely this is a bug in your code. Read the 'Note:'
in class comment of BoxMorph. Read the comments at
#submorphsMightProtrude.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body">Will take a look,
thank you.</div>
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body"><br>
</div>
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<div>
<p>A few further notes:</p>
<p>- Font subtitution: Yes. We need this. If someone
volunteers to work on this they will have by full support.</p>
<p>- Shadows and Vector Feathering. If someone is interested
enough to work on it, it could be done.</p>
<p>For other issues mentioned in your video, you may bring
them up here anytime.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body">Thank you. I might
pick some of these up when I can't go further without them.</div>
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body"><br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:2f04f5df-9333-4ee6-8eee-c217e6932415@cuis.st">
<div class="moz-forward-container"> </div>
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<p>I'm sure many people will have a lot of fun with this.
Kudos.</p>
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I hope so!</div>
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body"><br>
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<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body">Milan</div>
<div style="font-size:-apple-system-body"><br>
</div>
<br>
<br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Juan Vuletich
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.cuis.st">www.cuis.st</a>
github.com/jvuletich
researchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletich
independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich
patents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletich</pre>
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