Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> For older computers, the limitation was in the graphics card itself. Monitors could respond limited only by scan and refresh rates, typically 60--120 Hz, possibly better.

If we go really old, we start getting into really slooooow phospors. It would take multiple seconds for a blinking cursor to fade.




Or ink latency. (Best latency.)

Or punch cards.

Or toggled programs.

Or jaquard cards.

Or ...

The discussion above was of the 1990s. Displays were graphical and bitmapped, not text. I remember when dragging and resizing windows with contents visible became A Thing.

And yes, I used computers in the phosphor age. And just a tad during the teletype period. I don't think either applies, though e-ink does have some characteristics of phosphors in terms over overall response rate.

The main distinction though is that phosphors painted in a line, not a full-screen refresh (though it might be interesting to see just how e-ink does refresh in super-slow motion), and then decays.

For e-ink, the characteristic is that higher-quality refreshes take longer, and that a full flush (blacking then blanking the full screen) creates a marked flash. It's much better on recent high-end displays than on, say, a ten-year-old Kindle. But there's still some of the effect visible.

Much less a problem when paging, or when there's a single cursor-point-of-change when typing text. More a problem with complex dynamic displays.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: