[Techtalk] How Temporarily Change Resolutions

[Conor Daly]

On Sun, Oct 26, 2003 at 03:44:37AM -0600 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Kathy Wills thought:
> >
> I found out the reason this didn't work before was that my XF86Config 
> only contained 800x600 and 640x340. I added the 1024x768 and was able to 
> toggle to that resolution. Now when I toggle back to the 800x600 the 
> edges of the screen are not within my monitor screen. The 1024x768 fits 
> in the screen just fine. I'm not sure I'm explaining this right. Now I'm 
> going to have to search on how to fix that to get it back like it was.

This is one of the really annoying things about X.  If you set a series of
resolutions in the XF86Config, the highest one listed is used to set the
"Virtual" resolution.  When you switch into another resolution, what you
get is a "ViewPort" at the new resolution _onto_ the desktop which is at
the "Virtual" resolution.  There doesn't seem to be any way to have the
desktop _remapped_ to the new resolution so you end up stuck with seeing
only 800x600 of your 1024x768 Virtual desktop.

One passible way around this is to launch a second X session using a
different XF86Config.  This config could have the 1024x768 resolution
required by Xcdroast.  Try

startx -- :1 

to get a second X session on tty8 (ctrl/alt/F8).  

XFree86 --xf86config <configfile> 

allows you to use a different XF86Config file but I haven't figured out
how to do this with startx.  
Another option is to set different resolutions for different colour depths.
Now you can use:

startx -- -depth 16

to start a 16 bit colour session in the required resolution while keeping
your default 24 bit colour resolution as 800x600.

It is a desperate kludge though.  Have you
considered using a different CD burner that doesn't insist on any
particular resolution.  cdrtoaster is one that comes to mind.  

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

Domestic Sysadmin :-)
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