[rfc-i] Scaling factors for graphics

Whether figures are legible and useful at the resolution offered is an editorial decision that cannot be completely automated, although some guidelines might help.

For I-Ds the authors should optimize, and reviewers should review, the effectiveness of the figures in various renditions.

For RFCs, should the RFC editor get enough source to be able to do the kind of editing publishers do for technical publications? To resize (or float) figures when it would aid comprehension or utility?

> On Jul 13, 2014, at 9:57 PM, "Martin J. D?rst" <duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp> wrote:
> 
> Some vague thought that I just had and that may be helpful:
> It may be that for some figures, it's more important to get the overall overview first, whereas for other figures, it's much more the details that an author wants the audience to look at. It may be possible to distinguish these two modes with different settings.
> 
> Regards,   Martin.
> 
>> On 2014/07/14 01:54, Ted Lemon wrote:
>>> On Jul 12, 2014, at 7:52 PM, Joe Touch <touch at isi.edu> wrote:
>>> Consider the periodic table of typefaces:
>>> http://wallpaperswide.com/periodic_table_of_typefaces-wallpapers.html
>>> 
>>> The names will *never* be legible on a VGA display, regardless of whether it's 2" diagonal or projected on the side of a barn.
>>> 
>>> On a 4" iPhone display, the names are legible (barely) - granted they're small, but legible.
>> 
>> Ah.   This is only legible on my laptop display at full display resolution.   I would not be able to read it off a Retina display without a magnifying glass.   So I don't think it should be displayed on a Retina display shrunk to fit the screen even though in principle the information is there, which it wouldn't be on a vga screen of the same size.   That's what I was getting at.
>> 
>> You do have a point that pixel resolution matters, but I wasn't imagining that we'd even support down-scaling the image to fit on a low-resolution display.   So what I had in mind was that if the minimum width was specified as 4"x9", and the pixel resolution of the image was 1920x1080, then on a retina display it would still be scaled up and scrollable even if it fit, and on a 13" vga display, it would still be scrollable despite fitting the physical dimensions, rather than being down-scaled.
>> 
>> I'm sensitive to this issue because my Google phone has a 1920x1200 display, and stuff that fits perfectly well at pixel resolution is sometimes completely unintelligible because the image is so small.
>> 
>> However, given that we're talking about SVG (probably), specifying a minimum pixel size as well as a minimum physical dimension is a good idea.
>> 
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