As technology advances, both screen size and pixel density increase. It would seem that the quality of the images should increase, fatigue after prolonged work - to decrease, but at some point, everything went wrong. And yes, if you take a modern, very large monitor and a sophisticated development environment with a thousand panels - not a fact that will be comfortable. Let's try to figure out why.
A long time ago in a distant galaxy the size of monitors was 14 ", standard text mode - 80 * 25
and work was quite enjoyable. When Windows appeared and the 800 * 600 graphics mode, then the letters in development environments, menus, input fields, etc. They have become much smaller - so much more fit on the screen! Then large resolutions appeared, the standard monitor grew to 17 ”, then the aspect ratio was 16 * 9, the resolution and size grew all ... At some point, I realized that the standard scheme of Windows 7 even with a scale of 125% is somehow small 14 ”laptop with FullHD, which is on a large monitor, not to mention the default settings in IDEA.
- This is old age, thought Stirlitz.
- What do I have to do with it ?? thought agent old age.Armed with GOST R ISO 9241-3-2003, roulette and school algebra with geometry, I decided to check if I’m wrong about choosing large fonts for encoding (now my favorite is Roboto Mono Light 20 from Google), and greatly increasing the scale of the document when working with office suites.
Baseline: in accordance with GOST, the comfortable angular size of the symbol in height is 20'-22 '(angular minutes). Angular size - a versatile piece, but uncomfortable. In the same GOST, there is a nomogram of distance dependencies from the monitor - the character size is a comfortable size, but it is difficult to use it in reality - the characters are small, the ruler is large, the picture is not clear. Our way is a simple calculator, where you can enter easily accessible and commonly used measures and understand whether the size of a symbol correctly meets the requirements of the standard.
To calculate the required diagonal of the monitor, its resolution in X and Y, the distance from which we look and the height of the control character in pixels. All data, except for the distance, can be obtained without departing from the same monitor, with the distance is also not difficult - sheet A4 has dimensions of 21 * 29.7 cm, so that can be estimated with sufficient accuracy. The height of a monitor pixel can be calculated based on its diagonal and resolution, the angular size of a symbol - knowing its size in pixels and the viewing distance. Calculator temporarily lives in Excel at the link below.
Check 1: laptop monitor 14 ”FHD, standard Windows layout 125%, capital letter height in the Excel 2010 menu - 9 pixels, viewing distance - 45 cm, angular letter size - 11 ', which is half the standard required. Check 2: the monitor is already 27 ”, but already 2560 * 1440, the distance is 60 cm, The result is slightly better - 12 ', but still bad (at least - 20').
To make it better, you need to increase the font size or decrease the viewing distance. Check: for the size of the same letter in 21 ', you need to look at the laptop from a distance (the
sponsor of the calculation is the option Select parameter in Excel ) - 34.4 cm, but firstly, the back hurts so much, and secondly, do not forget about the minimum distance from GOST - 40 cm. The size of a comfortable font for me for encoding in IDEA (Roboto Light 20, the letter “S” is 15 pixels high) for a large monitor just fit into the standard, even at the lower limit - 20 '. The scale of the document in Word (really large scale), in which I write this article, leaning back in his chair, also almost hit - 75 centimeters to the monitor, a symbol of 18 pixels in height - a total of 19 '.
Findings:* State standards are written for a reason :);
* First of all, you need to trust your feelings of comfort, and not the default settings;
* Check font sizes on devices that you use for a long time.
The calculator (.xls) is available by
reference.Good luck to all!