fixed aspect scaling and 16:10 modes

[Alex Deucher]

On 4/10/09, Rafi Rubin <rafi at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> You'll see the modes that I keep around in my xorg.conf.  I don't actually use all that many of them with much regularity, but they
>  are nice have.
>
>  I think the ones I consider most important are those that match the most common vesa modes in height while maintaining the 16:10
>  aspect ratio.  And I also like the have the modes that precisely half the dimensions of the native resolution of the screen.
>
>  At this point most the newer screen I work with are 1280x800 or 1920x1200.
>
>  So, I'd personally suggest including:
>  640x400, 768x480, 960x600, 1229x768, 1280x800, and 1920x1200
>  (not terribly fond of the 1024 high resolutions, too much pain with 5x4 screens).
>
>
>  Anyway, I think aside from listing resolutions people like, ignoring modelines in x config is a bad idea.  Especially if the driver
>  gives no indication as to why its rejecting them or some warning that it doesn't even want to process them.
>

The driver doesn't ignore modelines, your configuration is just
incorrect for a randr 1.2 capable driver.  You need to associate your
monitor with a particular output since you have more than one (LVDS,
VGA-0, and DVI-0).  Since your monitor is not linked to a particular
output, it gets associated with the first output enuerated, which in
your case is VGA-0:
(II) RADEON(0): Output VGA-0 using monitor section Monitor0
Hence all your user specified mode end up associated with VGA-0 rather
than LVDS.

Either rename your monitor to the name of the output you want to
associate it with:
Identifier   "Monitor0" -> Identifier   "LVDS"
or create a manual association in your device section:
Option "Monitor-LVDS" "Monitor-0"

See section III. of this page for more information:
http://wiki.debian.org/XStrikeForce/HowToRandR12


>
>  As for the fixed aspect scaling.  Its just nice to be able to play some of the less sophisticated games that don't really handle the
>  resolutions nicely without odd jiggery pokery.  Though just having used xrandr 1.3 for the first time today, I see that manual
>  scaling and panning will suffice to make things nice for those games.  But it still requires a bit of fiddling.
>

You can set the scale type to center or aspect or full using the
xrandr command I mentioned in the previous email:
xrandr --output LVDS --set scaler aspect
or
xrandr --output LVDS --set scaler center
or
xrandr --output LVDS --set scaler full

That will change the scale method used when not using the panel's
native mode.  The default is full.

Alex