Re: Changing resolutions (actually on-topic)

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Tue, Jan 23, 2001 at 11:58:02AM -0500 or thereabouts, Poletti, Don wrote:
> I'm a little confused about how to change screen resolutions in X. 

This seems a common problem. I think it's a Unix/Linux thing. When I
discovered that on Windows you could change resolutions on the fly,
I was shocked :) 

> I generally do it by running Configuration as root
> and only picking one resolution as ctrl/alt/+- doesn't ever seem
> to work. However I know that changing resolutions on the fly
> is possible.

Nod. The trick to this is to select several possible resolutions in
your X setup tool of choice. They'll all get written into your
XF86Config. X will start up at whichever of those comes first by
default. I expect there's a startx option which overrides this. I
have never bothered to check. _Then_ control-alt-+/- will flip 
between the resolutions in your XF86Config file.

I was about to give an example from my machine, and just discovered
control-alt-+/- appears not to be working on this machine, although
it is on others. Bugger. That was a good example, then. I -think-
what I said above is valid, but clearly there is a second step I
have apparently not done on this one :) 

> Architecturally this is not a gnome issue but the user
> perspective it is. Would it be possible to write an
> applet that changed the resolution? Would it have to
> be suid? How hard would this be?

I dunno :)
 
> In addition to picking from the configured modes like 
> using ctrl/alt/+- it would great if it could also be a mini
> Xconfigurator to add modes to the XF86Config file. At a minimum
> it could have help info to point the user to XConfigurator so they 
> aren't constantly frustrated and force to post to a list somewhere.

Well, XConfigurator was RH-specific, originally. It may have migrated
elsewhere by now. These things do :) I believe the tool which XFree86
has as default is XF86Setup. 

I think what you're suggesting is a great idea from the end-user point
of view, but I am told by people who know more than me that writing X 
configuration tools is not at all easy. 

Telsa