Paul E Condon wrote: > On 2009-09-25_10:07:22, peasth...@shaw.ca wrote: >> Paul, >> >>> Thanks. gtf gave me a plausible modeline. I editted it into xorg.conf >>> as suggested and it worked. >> If you can spare a few minutes, please post a detail or two. >> It might solve a remotely similar problem here. >> >> [In-reply-to: might work with the Message-id: enclosed in < >. >> We'll see.] >> >> Thanks, ... Peter E. > > I want to be helpful, but I'm not sure how. Many people reading this > know a lot more about X11 than I do, and some will jump on what I say > because whatever I say is obviously wrong at some level of detail or > another. But here's an attempt --- > > Here is the video sections of xorg.conf on my machine as I originally > found it: > > Section "Device" > Identifier "Configured Video Device" > EndSection > > Section "Monitor" > Identifier "Configured Monitor" > EndSection > > Section "Screen" > Identifier "Default Screen" > Monitor "Configured Monitor" > EndSection > > That's all. Notice there is nothing about what brand of monitor or > about horizontal or vertical sweep frequency ranges. Or anything else > that really distinguishes one monitor or video card from another. > > According to some discussions that I found on the web, the screen > section is supposed to link a video device to a monitor by having > references to both a monitor and a video device in a single screen > section. But there is no mention of the video section that is to be > used for this screen section. Yes, I know. It's all handled > automatically now. But it is puzzling when you haven't looked at > xorg.conf ever before, and can't remember the name which was used to > designate the configuration file from the last time you read about X. > > I followed the suggestion of using gtf. > $ gtf 1366 768 60 <return> gives: > # 1368x768 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 47.70 kHz; pclk: 85.86 MHz > Modeline "1368x768_60.00" 85.86 1368 1440 1584 1800 768 769 772 795 > -HSync +Vsync > > The first line is obviously a comment. The second looks like it might > be input to a computer program that parses the line and plants data at > important places in RAM. The instructions from Tom are to put this > output into the monitor section, so now my monitor section is: > > Section "Monitor" > Identifier "Configured Monitor" > # 1368x768 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 47.70 kHz; pclk: 85.86 MHz > Modeline "1368x768_60.00" 85.86 1368 1440 1584 1800 768 769 772 795 > -HSync +Vsync > EndSection > > This section violates the specifications that I found on the web for a > proper monitor section, but push-on. Maybe the specification is old > and applies to an earlier version of X.
My understanding of this is no clearer than yours, just hands-on trial-and-error experience. I understand that anything put under /etc/X11/xorg is "old school" already, but still works for now... I like the idea of xorg auto-configuration, but why the chosen setting are not written to plain text in xorg.conf (or somewhere else) is beyond me. > > To get this new xorg.conf to be used, I rebooted. At first there was > no visible difference in the display. I went to Gnome Preferences > Screen Resolution and found a new line in the resolution offerings! In > addition to 1024x768 there was now 1280x768. I selected this now > offering. Clicked on 'Apply'. There was some flashing of the screen > and after a few seconds it repainted with much better shaped > lettering. Some careful checking of html screens that are known to > contain renditions of circles revealed that the new setting still > rendered a circle as an ellipse, but with hardly noticeable > eccentricity. So, good enough for me, especially after reading on the > web all the crys for help from other tortured souls. > > I ran xrandr, which displays information about what configurations of > X are possible for the hardware on the computer on which it is run. It > confirmed that 1280x768 was OK, which means to me that the programmer > who wrote xrandr understands X far better than I do ;-0. (This also > applies to the programmer who wrote gtf.) > > This is pretty much how it happened. I read a lot of HowTos that were > not useful. Many were hopelessly out of date. (X under Potatoe?) Here > and there I found references to hal. I have not pieced together a > coherent idea of what hal is supposed to do. There ought to be a way > to automate the configuring to video hardware, but it must be very > hard to do, else it would have been done long ago. CRT monitors have > very different internal circuitry from LCD monitors, but there appears > to be no reliable way for the software to determine whether the monitor > is CRT or LCD, and no way to put a user specified flag into xorg.conf > without breaking someone's software. > > The monitor that I installed and succeeded in configuring well enough, > was a trial run for me. It was my first flat panel display. It was > painful. But not so painful as to lead me to persist in using CRTs > for the rest of my life. And I think it will get better as xorg > developers continue to tinker with the code in ways that I have no > way to understand. I supposed the right way would be to use some template in /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/, use a bit of xml magic and put this in /etc/hal/fdi/policy/ . (or edit preferences.fdi there directly ?). I tried this approach about a synaptics touchpad problem, and it didn't work, xorg.conf option did... > > HTH Tom -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
