Bug#363359: xserver-xorg: Resolution has changed from 100 dpi, to 75 dpi

[rjs@cs.hut.fi (Riku Saikkonen)]

(I don't have anything to do with the Debian X packages, I am just a
long-time Debian user who happens to follow the debian-x mailing list
which receives these bug reports.)

Rob Bochan <robslaptop@gmail.com> writes:
>However, why am I having to add the dpi switch to the startx command now, 
>after all this time (2+ years) running Sid on the machine without having to 
>do so before? It has _always_ defaulted to 100 dpi previously, even when 
>XFree86 was still in the rotation.

If I remember correctly (I hope I do, but I'm not quite sure), the
file /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc, which startx uses, contained the
following command in woody and sarge:

  exec /usr/bin/X11/X -dpi 100 -nolisten tcp

Perhaps this has changed in Xorg 7.x?

I remember previously having to remove the "-dpi 100" manually,
because I wanted to specify the actual resolution in the configuration
file. I never understood why the Debian default setting was to
override anything specified in the server configuration file, so if
this default command-line argument was removed in Xorg 7, I'm
personally quite happy with the change. However, perhaps it should be
documented, e.g., in the NEWS file? (I don't know if it already is, I
haven't looked at the 7.x packages yet.)

Another possibility would be to ask for the resolution when the X
packages are configured, and write this out to the auto-generated X
server configuration file.

I think the proper place to configure the resolution should be the
server configuration file, since that contains all the other
information about the monitor (such as the supported frequencies, if
they are not autodetected), and since (I think) the server
command-line arguments need to be specified in multiple files (at
least previously, xserverrc applied only to startx and, for example,
xdm had its own configuration file where the server command-line
options could be specified - I don't know if this has changed
recently).

-- 
-=- Rjs -=- rjs@cs.hut.fi, Riku.Saikkonen@hut.fi