Re: X11 resolution
Re: X11 resolution
- Subject: Re: X11 resolution
- From: Vernon Williams <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:27:01 -0600
Monday, December 15, 2008, 11:33pm
Why not use the monitor's dpi if there is only one monitor,
or there are several but they all have the same dpi, which
would probably account for a majority of cases?
This is under the presumption that the OS can surely
produce a list of all currently attached monitors and their
dpi's. If you could just write a C function with no arguments
to return an allocated integer array of all the current dpi's,
with the last entry zero, that would make it easy.
For the case of multiple monitors with differing dpi's, why
not have a preference for the minimum of all the dpi's, the
maximum, the average (rounded to an integer), or some
specified value, to make it Mac friendly? I suspect that
in most such cases, the user would go for either the min
or the max. Specifying min, max, or average would give
the right answer in the case of all monitors having the
same dpi.
Or one might try to find some compromise dpi based on
some algorithm, maybe using common factors of the dpi's
or something. This might not be feasible all the time, but
it might it some cases. Years ago I did something vaguely
similar when dealing with well log curves with differing
depth sampling rates, fiddling with least common multiples
and greatest common factors and the like to produce a best
common sampling rate to which all the curves could be
interpolated. I should think about it a bit and see if I can
come up with some reasonable algorithm.
Presumably the dpi would be set when X11 started up,
and you would have to restart X11 if you wanted to add
or remove monitors.
Another interesting thought would be to provide an
easy way to associate a particular X11 server with a
particular monitor or monitors, so each server could
use the best dpi for its associated monitors. This is in
light of the recent discussion about making it possible
to run multiple X11 servers simultaneously.
Vernon Williams
On Dec 15, 2008, at 9:07 PM, Jeremy Huddleston wrote:
On Dec 15, 2008, at 14:09, Ralph Martin wrote:
This is not very handy on my MacBook Pro 17" with high resolution
screen, which seems to be close to 133dpi (1900 x 1200 with 17"
diagonal?). Indeed, in some programs the font is too small to be
readable.
Unfortunately:
X11 does not set the resolution automatically (this would be best),
What should it set it to? As mentioned before, there is no correct
value for multi-monitor setups that have different dpi for each
display.
nor does it offer a preference to let the user set it (a poor second
best).
Sure it does. It's the same preference available to you in every
other X11 environment. Edit the /usr/X11/bin/startx script and/or set
the values in ~/.Xresources. Search the mailing list for the info I
provided the last time this was brought up or if you cant find it, let
me know, and I'll try to dig it up and add it to the FAQ.
--Jeremy
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