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From: chan@hpfcmgw.HP.COM (Chan Benson)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: Open Windows
Message-ID: <1200004@hpfcmgw.HP.COM>
Date: 27 Dec 89 17:58:52 GMT
References: <8912212125.AA04080@tripoli.ees.anl.gov>
Organization: HP Fort Collins, CO
Lines: 17

> The answer is somewhat simple:  it's rather difficult to scale everything
> appropriately to handle differing device densities if your have no way
> of determining those densities.  As most (though certainly not all)
> monitors do not have any provisio for providing this information to the
> framebuffer (and most framebuffers wouldnt know what to do with it anyway),
> certain assumptions have to be made about the attached devices in advance.
> In our shop, we regularly swap 16 and 19 inch color monitors around.  On
> a Sun cg-3 these both have a resolution of 1152 X 900;  this means the 16
> inch monitor has a higher density of pixels per unit measure in either
> dimension than the 19 inch.

Certainly it would have been very easy (though a bit ugly) to have a
config file in which the user could indicate the resolution (in dpi)
of the monitor they have hooked up.

			-- Chan Benson
			HP Fort Collins