daniel@mirsa.inria.fr (Daniel Dardailler) (12/26/89)
Hello folX,
If you have a minute, you can participate in this petition for
a better X server attitude regarding device independence:
1) Enter:
xdpyinfo | grep millimeters
which will give you the X server values for your screen dimensions.
2) Take a REAL ruler and take the REAL measures of your screen (pixels on)
which will certainly give you other numbers.
3) Send the whole line to xpert and to your server vendor.
We need to act now so that our children can select X fonts in a device
independent way (point size rather than pixel size) and be able to
describe application dimensions in millimeters rather than in pixels.
Here are a few measurements from my own lab...
-----------------------------------------------------------
Workstation | Release | Xserver | Real | Error |
type | number | size in mm | size in mm | in % |
-----------------------------------------------------------|
SUN3/SUN4 | R3/R4 | 254x325 | 270x340 | 6.2x4.5 |
SUN HighRes | R3 | 451x361 | 270x340 | 67 x6 |
IBM RT | R3 | 325x325 | 285x285 | 14 |
HP9000 | R1 | 238x298 | 275x345 | 13.5 |
DPX 1000 | R3 | 293x391 | 270x360 | 8.5x8.6 |
VAXSTATION | DEC? | 292x346 | 285x325 | 2.5x6.5 |
-----------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Dardailler | Email : daniel@mirsa.inria.fr
BULL Centre de Sophia Antipolis | Phone : (33) 93 65 77 71
2004, Route des Lucioles | Telex : 97 00 50 F
06565 Valbonne CEDEX France | Fax : (33) 93 65 77 66
|black@masscomp.ccur.com (Sam Black) (12/27/89)
In article <470@mirsa.inria.fr> daniel@mirsa.inria.fr (Daniel Dardailler) writes: >Hello folX, > >If you have a minute, you can participate in this petition for >a better X server attitude regarding device independence: > > ... > >Here are a few measurements from my own lab... > > ... > I agree that this is a problem, but you have to realize that EVERY monitor is different. Not only the size, but the colors are different (which is another can of worms). There is no way for the server to know the exact size of your personal monitor, so the best it can do is estimate based on averages. Also, since some vendors sell graphics subsystems with both 16" and 19" (and other) monitors, there is no way that the server can really know the correct size. The example you gave of only a 6% difference is truly amazing. - sam black -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm pink, therefore I'm Spam. ___________ / ________/__ ...!{decvax,uunet}!masscomp!black /__/_______/ / black@westford.ccur.com Concurrent /__________/ Computer Corporation --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stroyan@hpfcdq.HP.COM (Mike Stroyan) (12/27/89)
> Here are a few measurements from my own lab... > > ----------------------------------------------------------- > Workstation | Release | Xserver | Real | Error | > type | number | size in mm | size in mm | in % | > -----------------------------------------------------------| > HP9000 | R1 | 238x298 | 275x345 | 13.5 | > ----------------------------------------------------------- > > Daniel Dardailler The HP X server can be told the screen size by setting the diagonal size in the /usr/lib/X11/X0screens configuration file. Since the screen size depends on the monitor and the monitor can be of various sizes, the server depends on you to configure the size. The line to set the size should look something like "/dev/crt monitorsize 480 # in millimeters". Mike Stroyan, stroyan@hpfcla.hp.com
daniel@mirsa.inria.fr (Daniel Dardailler) (12/27/89)
Sam writes: > There is no way for the server to know the exact size of your > personal monitor, so the best it can do is estimate based on averages. There is a -dpi option in the sample X server from mit, but it seems to be turned off in most of the actual implementations... Since there is no way in the X11 protocol to *set* DisplaySizeinMM (just a way to get it), we could use some kind of property mechanism, based on a particuliar convention, to inform the X server of its real screen size.
tom@ssd.csd.harris.com (Tom Horsley) (12/28/89)
Well, I just measured my NCD-16 and got 250 mm wide by 255 mm high.
The server says 245 by 245.
Other NCD-16's around the building gave:
245 by 250
247 by 252
243 by 253
This seems pretty good to me since intrinsic variations in the adjustments
on the monitor can cause variations in the few millimeter range. Now when we
all get liquid crystal displays I will expect the dimensions to be exact...
--
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======================== Aging: Just say no! ========================scfisher@dtoa1.dt.navy.mil (Fisher) (01/11/90)
On my Silicon Graphics Personal Iris, the xserver screen dimensions are 338 x 270 mm; while the actual screen dimensions are approx. 344 x 274 mm ( as best as i can measure). This gives an error in the server dimensions of 1.8% x 1.5% "Don't blame me - I voted for Bill & Opus"