[arandr-users] adding custom display resolutions on ARandR

[chrysn]

hello paulo,

On Fri, Feb 06, 2015 at 10:41:20PM +0000, Paulo Silva wrote:
> i heard that XRandR allows us to add and remove display resolutions,
> but i never did it successfully - i guess would be great if ARandR
> would allow this, like adding modelines like used on xorg.conf? (this
> is mostly because, for example, i know that my old cinescope display
> supports 1280x960, but recently i can't get up to 1024x768 there)

the tricky thing about adding resolutions is that you need to specify a
complete mode line, and especially when a display does not support
auto-detection of the mode line, chances are that the details of the
mode line might matter.

i've considered adding modeline support in the upcoming 0.2 release
(developed as the 'verbose' branch), but i haven't seen practical use
cases. have you successfully used xrandr to add and use the 1280x960
mode, how did you obtain the required mode line, and do you know what
went wrong with your device so the mode is not auto-detected?

> another neat feature would be if resolutions could be grouped as
> display proportion categories; like 1024x768, 800x600, 1280x960 and
> 1600x1200 in the 4x3 group; 1280x1024 and 640x512 in the 5x4 group;
> 1280x800, 1600x1000, 640x400 and 800x500 in the 8x5 group; etc...

i'm not sure grouping them all is the right thing to do in this
situation, but i'd consider adding the (sometimes rounded) aspect ratio
and/or "grouping away" non-matching ratios. might look like that (lines
in <> are non-selectable group headers, not sure yet how that works with
HIG; texts in [] are my notes):

Resolution > (X) 1920x1080
             ( ) 1360x768    [ some rounding is involved ]
	     <Other aspect ratios>
	     ( ) 1600x1050 (8:5)
	     ( ) 1600x1024 (25:16)
	     ( ) 1400x1050 (4:3)
	     ( ) 1280x1024 (5:4)
	     ( ) 1440x900 (8:5)
	     ( ) 1280x960 (4:3)
	     ( ) 1152x864 (4:3)
	     ( ) 1024x768 (4:3)
	     ( ) 800x600 (4:3)
	     ( ) 640x480 (4:3)

that might even work without an additional label for "Other aspect
ratios", a plain separator might be enough. i figure that most times
when you want to reduce the resolution, you either want bigger texts
(eg. when your desktop environment doesn't scale everything with the
text size -- in which case you want to stick to your aspect ratio), or
you want to match another device's resolution (in which case you are
looking for a particular one).

would that cover your use cases? others on the list, what do you think?

(paulo, i've directed my reply to the -users mailing list which i
consider suitable for such discussion. you can either subscribe[1] and/or
reply directly to the list, or (in case you don't want to participate in
public discussion) reply to me and i'll only post my replies to the list
and keep you in bcc like now.)

best regards
chrysn

[1] https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/arandr-users

-- 
To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.
  -- Bene Gesserit axiom
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