Re: What Window Manager/Desktop Environment do you use, and why?

At Mon, 9 Jun 2025 19:53:03 -0000 (UTC) Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:

 
candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:

Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote at 13:00 this Saturday (GMT):

"Widescreen" has always been "chasing the movies" because the mouth
breathers can't understand why their latest remake of X has those
black bars on the top and bottom of the picture.
>
4:3 was the original (way back) movie aspect ratio.  When TV was
created, it copied 4:3 because that's what the movies were set to. 
The result was the movies then felt they had to "1 up" to maintain
their reason for being and they became 16:9 aspect.  That was, until
TV's went 16:9 and the movies had then gone "ultra wide" to maintain
their 1 upsmanship.  With the result that the mouth breathers now
have to sometimes contend with black bars on top, or on the sides,
of whatever they are streaming at the moment, depending upon what
year it was filmed.

 
Don't forget "fit to screen", the most pointless feature that every
media player seems to have for some reason.  Are the black bars
seriously so annoying that you would rather completely cut off part
of the video??

 
Yes, for some, they are.  For those who fail to understand why the bars
are present (and don't bother to learn) they just see it as "the movie
isn't filling my screen...".  When they hit the "fit to screen" (some
call it 'zoom' which is a more meaningful name) option, then "the movie
fills the screen".  And somehow they never ever notice that the edges
of the movie are no longer visible.  Granted, most directors position
the "action" in the middle and the far edges usually don't contain
directly meaningful material to the overall story, so they also are not
missing anything which would alert them to the fact that the edges have
disappeared.
 
Worse are the ones that hit the other button that simply "squishes" the
whole movie to fit the output device.  So you have either vertical or
horizontal distortion, or both (depending upon how the movie vs. 
display aspect ratios fit together).  And yet, there they are, watching
"too wide" or "too narrow" (or too short/too tall) people/things,
blissfully unaware that the image has been distorted.
 

Way back when when TVs were 4:3 and when Panovision (wide screen) movies would
be broadcast on TV, the movies would be "edited" to fit -- this was done
"manually" (eg by a human on a scene by scene basis). Same for early VHS
tapes. Later "letterbox" was used for VHS and some cable movie channels, and
the "black bars" came into being...

I have an old VHS tape of Red Sonia that was "hand edited" to fit 4:3, except
at the very end (Arnold and Brigit kissing scene that morphs into the
credits), which has Arnold and Brigit and their horses suddenly too tall.
                                                                                       

 

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