about X resolutions on non-laptops (xresprobe)

[Fabio Massimo Di Nitto]

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004, Bdale Garbee wrote:

> Fabio Massimo Di Nitto <fabbione at fabbione.net> writes:
>
> > That's exactly the point of my previous mail. I need to know what is the
> > "safe default" since it is a combination of monitor/gfx card. On my system
> > i can see that the correct resolution is the second best one. Is it true
> > for everbody out there?
>
> Probably not.
>
> "Conventional wisdom" has always been to start with one of the lower-resolution
> VESA standards (for a long time everyone used 640x480 16 colors, then it
> seemed like 800x600 was more or less assumed to be available, most recently
> folks seem to assume that 1024x768 will always work) and don't try to mess
> with higher resolutions until you've got something working that the user can
> fiddle from.

Unfortunatly some lower resolutions tends to be really bad on some
laptops.

> Trying to do a better job than that is admirable, but I worry that anything you
> try to do is going to fail in some cases, and therefore you may not end up
> delighting more people than you annoy no matter what you do?  [shrug]

I think we have to take the chance and do it. There are failures even with
conventional (or obsoleted) way of handling these config bits. It's never
a win to win situation.

> One practical problem with picking a resolution too high, even if it syncs up
> ok, is that it can be hard to read the text in dialog boxes you might want/need
> to.  I don't *think* it's just because I'm getting older, but...  ;-)

If the detection is done properly you never end up with 1600x1200 on a 13"
screen. In the worst case there is always an array of resolution in X
config and the user can still switch on the fly with crtl-alt-+ or -.

thanks
Fabio

-- 
<user> fajita: step one
<fajita> Whatever the problem, step one is always to look in the error log.
<user> fajita: step two
<fajita> When in danger or in doubt, step two is to scream and shout.