Stefan Seefeld wrote:
Just think of the many places you'll need to deal with geometry (rectangle/point/size), and converting from one type of unit (px to cm, cm to in, etc) to another.
I agree. In particular, I'd strongly suggest to draw a clear distinction between physical dimension and resolution. Most current GUIs did get that wrong, I believe in that they conditioned us all to think of size when talking about number of pixels.
The consequence is similar to the Y2K bug: applications won't easily adapt to displays with different resolutions (well, may be within a narrow range), and so a lot of efford is needed on a high (application) level to compensate for that lack of abstraction.
Can you elaborate on this? For explicit 2D graphics "pixel" is already just a convention, since you can scale that as you like. And for window layout, well, you should not do manual window layout at all. GUI library should select font size and other things, and everything will be laid out. What problems do you have in mind? - Volodya