[Pan-users] Re: Sizing Pan's window

[Duncan]

beartooth posted <address@hidden>, excerpted
below,  on Mon, 28 Feb 2005 14:37:24 -0500:

> Detail: the Benq uses 1280 x 1024 -- and FC1 acknowledges that. FC2 offers
> only a choice between 800 x 600 (not 640) and 640 x 480 -- and I see no
> way, at least through the GUI, to make it 1280 x 1024 instead of either.

>From what I've seen on the list, PAN doesn't work well in <=800x600 mode,
with problems similar to those you outline.  It needs at least 1024x768 to
be comfortable.

Thus, I'd suggest working on the problem from the X and hardware side. 
Hopefully, you still have a copy of your old and working xorg.conf (or
XF86Config) around, and can replace the current one with the bad
detection.  Standard location for the above config file is
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.  (The legacy XF86Config was usually in the same dir.) 
If you have neither of these files, it may be located elsewhere, or there
are various ways to generate it.  (X --config and the like, details are
out of scope for this post, but there is plenty of help available in the
various manpages and on the web, HOWTOs, etc, if your distrib doesn't have
anything specific available.)

You may find your X log, with its detailed detection of modes and what
resolutions it rejects and why, quite helpful.  The standard location for
it is /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

The rest of this post assumes you have an xorg.conf file, and it just
needs some tweaking. Take a look at the xorg.conf manpage for the details,
but here are the places I'd check in order.

The first thing in xorg.conf to look at would be under the Screen
section(s), Display subsection. There should be a listing of resolution
modes, 800x600 and so on.  The first (left) one in that list, if the other
info X detects or as configured allows it, should be the default mode.
You'll probably want to add at least 1280x1024, if it isn't already listed.

Quit and restart X, and recheck the log if it hasn't given you a higher
resolution.  You will now want to pay attention to what the log says was
detected for monitor clock rates, and see how that matches what is
configured in your xorg.conf Monitor section(s).  Sometimes the info the
monitors spit out is incorrect.  You'll need to look up the info for your
monitor and plug it in as appropriate.  I'm not to familiar with flat
panel displays, but normal CRTs have a HorizSync range of perhaps 30-96
(don't just plug in a number as getting it wrong can kill hardware! look
up the correct values for your monitor, googling the info if necessary)
and a VertRefresh of perhaps 50-160.

Again, restart X and check the log.  You may have to tell X to ignore the
EDID autodetect info it gets if it is wrong and you are sure you have the
correct info configured.  That's a graphics adaptor driver specific
setting.

While we are at it, ensure that the correct graphics adaptor driver is
being used.  Note that for NVidia and ATI, there are both freedomware
(open source) and slaveware (closed source) drivers available.  The choice
is up to you, altho 3D acceleration is generally better in the slaveware
drivers if you don't have issues, moral or functional, running them. 
My choice should be obvious.

Beyond that, the graphics adaptor settings may need tweaked.  Check the
documentation for the slaveware drivers, or "man <driver>" (with <driver>
being nv, ati, radeon, etc) for the freedomware drivers.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html