I think one of the simplest and most intuitive ways to display more resolution would be to simply have a global zoom slider at the side of the pattern, something like
as you see in some other apps.
That’s it. Zooming in would let you see more lines. Zooming out perhaps even a whole long pattern.
And what would make the display of lines nicer would be highlighting of certain lines and “sub lines”. This highlighting would work according to the specified quantize, which could be defined for every track independently. Something I suggested a while ago.
As a matter of fact lines could either be highlighted according to quantize or shown according to quantize, so that you would only see the lines that you need. A concept very similar to the one in Cubase’s “Drum Editor”, look:
Just turn that picture vertically and replace the “diamonds” with C-4, D#4, …
As you see notes can still be anywhere, quantize just helps for the input of notes and for an organized display.