[NTLUG:Discuss] Re: XFree86

[Chris Cox]

Joel Sinor wrote:
...snip...
> To be clear, the hope would be that one can change 

> colour depth and

More difficult.

> resolution at minimum

Very possible.  Read section 2.3 of the XFree86 4.3.0 Release Notes.

, and it would be nice if you could change things
> like mouse acceleration and refresh rate, on the fly without any of the
> following, in increasing difficulty:
> 1) rebooting
> 2) logging out and back in
> 3) exiting XFree86
> 4) causing any X11 programs to die/lock up/suffer grievous harm / 
> whatever.

As advances are made to DRI/etc., closer hardware interactions
will be possible with X11, including some of the items you
mention.  In fact, if you are running XFree86 4.3.99, you may find
that some of these work already (can't say what will work or not,
perhaps none of it will work, apart from what is already supported).

> 
> IIRC KDE figured out how to do the mouse accelleration in a control
> panel like most GUIs do, but as to where and how it is handled in their
> environment I could not say.  If I coudl, maybe I could make that happen
> for my chosen environment, but for now it is handled by a command in my
> .xinitrc

Are you saying you desire different settings depending upon the
application you are using (one window behaves differently from another)?
This might be difficult.

> And also for the record, yes I know about ctrl-alt-+ and ctrl-alt--. 
> This has three major limitations:
> 1) you must have at least one defined resolution that is not the
> current one for the currently selected colour depth for this to do
> anything, in your /etc/X11/XF86Config

Advances in the frame buffer handling will help solve this.
Sometimes progress is slow though... there's not enough
money to help these folks focus on it full-time.

> 2) your XF86Config file must be configured such that these resolutions
> actually work and the server you are using recognizes them, and they
> must work with your chosen monitor.

Yes... but non-working resolutions will be skipped by most XFree drivers.

> 3) You cannot change the colour depth through this method, nor anything
> else but the number of pixels displayed on the screen (and in the case
...snip...

I think you'll have to wait for a future version of XFree86, or
something totally different in order to get the features you want.

Wrong answer, I know.
Chris