On Wed, 2005-02-16 at 11:26 +1300, Gavin Denby wrote:
An aside, how often do people really change gui resolutions ?? even in mac/windows ?? I tried to think when i last did it and it was when I changed the monitor here about a year ago, and I use a linux desktop daily. On my windows laptop I did it to allow a VCR hookup to a laptop to record a powerpoint screen, but in normal life ?????
I would imagine that it is a fairly rare occurrence. But XRandR is more about programmatic control of resolution changes and apps being able to detect the change in res and adjusting their dimensions. XFree86 has for a long time been able to change your screens resolution. Ctrl-Alt- Num+/Num- etc. It could change into whatever you had specified as a valid "mode" in your config. It defaulted to the first in the mode list on start up if you didn't specify a default elsewhere. However when you change the resolution with this method the 'desktop' size stays the same. When your mouse gets to the edge of the screen the 'virtual' desktop starts moving. Games (like the Loki ports) used this method and just grabbed the mouse and stopped if from going outside the bounds of the game window. A hack, but it worked. With XRandR you can actually change the X visual's dimensions. This is very different from the old method where the X visual stayed the same size. With XRandR you can also rotate the image (the 2nd R). This is good for tablet and palm devices (and vertical scrolling games in MAME). Much nicer to write on an A4 shaped screen but nicer to view other stuff in wide screen (movies, spreadsheets).
If this were in an installer I could understand, but do we really need these sorts of tools on the desktop ??
Yes. Ideally it should be a desktop setting (I think it might be in Gnome) so when you login your desktop gets automatically resized to your preference. I know quite a few office user types who don't like highres displays. Particularly older individuals with bung eyes. Hel,l even I scale up the fonts on a lot of webpages (ctrl+scroll wheel). My eyesight isn't that fantastic these days. Regards, Blind old orj... -- Oliver Jones » Roving Code Warrior oliver(a)deeperdesign.com » +64 (21) 41 2238 » www.deeperdesign.com