[NTLUG:Discuss] Re: XFree86

[Joel Sinor]

On Thu, 01 May 2003 01:21:51 -0500
Chris Cox <cjcox at acm.org> wrote:

> Joel Sinor wrote:
> ...snip...
<snip>

> > 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.
> 
<snip>
No, what I am saying is that I would like to be able to change mouse
acceleration on the fly (mouse acceleration being the rate at which the
mouse speeds up over time) so that I could tune it.  Right now I have
the following line in my .xinitrc:
xset mouse 6 6
the first part was a monkey number from google, but I did set the second
number myself based on the man page.  This sets that the mouse will
accelerate to 6x its normal speed after going past 6 pixels "quickly." 
AFAIK you cannot make more than one acceleration level/point nore can
you tune how fast the mouse must move to be accellerated under Linux
currently, but you can set the things I mentioned.  In KDE there is a
nifty control panel for this IIRC.  I have not tried doing xset again
during a session, but I suppose experimentation is not going to kill me.


> > 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.

<snip>
Yes, but this is exactly my point.  I have been in positions where there
was only one working config, so you could not change.  If it were true
that there was only one resolution/colour depth/refresh rate combination
for the setup in question, that woudl be okay.  But that does not
currently have to be the case for this to happen.
I also have found out the hard way that some drivers do not seem to be
able to deal with all refresh rates.  My monitor can do 85hz and I have
tried giving all the right info from Dell's site, but I get 75hz only
from the vesa driver for 1024x768.  I have read that doing modelines is
outmoded now ;), but I did try setting one up using the extremely
verbose documentation but
http://xtiming.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/xtiming.pl
seems to have to change some of the values I give it to get a decent
modeline, and this makes me wary of using it.  The HOWTO essentialy
seems to say "you don't have to do that with new xfree86" so I am
probably barking up the wrong tree.  When I get a new card and use a
better driver I will see if that changes the tune of things.


> Wrong answer, I know.

> Chris
> 
actually, it is the right answer, and unfortunately the one I knew
already... ;)  But I keep praying I will be wrong one day.  I know
people are working on this.
For the record, I am using XFree86 4.3.0.