X.Org Server Finally Adapted To Better Deal With 16:9 & 16:10 Displays

[hugo8621]

Not sure why this couldn't have been done 10 years ago, but oh well.

On a somewhat unrelated note, it irritates me how 16:9 became the standard and 16:10 didn't. 16:10 is much more akin to the human field of view ratio (which is roughly 3:2). With the exception of certain games, I never understood people's obsession with going wider.

I guess it's the costs. 16:9 at 13 inch is just a smaller area then 16:10 at 13 inch...

[xorbe]

Looks at 4960x1600 triple screen setup (1200x1600+2560x1600+1200x1600) and ponders what the problem is.

[dungeon]

I use nVidia's `MetaModes` option to lock the resolution at the native one (1280x1024 + 1920x1080 + 1280x1024) because I've yet to find a WM that doesn't scramble up my windows when the resolution changes...

I make xrandr sandwich when i want some game to force as lower but also as fake native resoultion, something like

xrandr --output X --mode Y --panning Y ; [B]your app[/B] ; xrandr --output X --mode Z --fb Z --panning Z

First set lower one and when app finish revert back to native but with all these This reverts things fine, just hopefully that app is not buggy and won't crash in between, but who cares about these cases - DO NOT RUN BROKEN APPS

unlike Windows

That is so called "exclusive fullscreen" bit or feature, All what Windows do there is to dynamically switches between these modes by also taking everything into account, even when some app crashes

Or maybe it just force something like later command for fullscreen apps to native res but no matter what - app closed = force, app out of focus = force and app dissapeared = again force

Sounds like "whatever you want in fullscreen i will take, whatever you do just do it... but i will also revert back no matter what" while on Linux you have "no, we won't allow you to do whatever you want in fullscreen and if you don't believe in that as a warning we will crash horribly if you dare to try to do such thing as real changing resolutions there"

At least manual forcing works in Linux also to some extent, as we miss feature

[leipero]

I guess it's the costs. 16:9 at 13 inch is just a smaller area then 16:10 at 13 inch...

How is that? It has been a long time since I've done math and geometry, but it is the d=13inch, diagonal, if diagonal is X surface area is always the same irrelevant of angle? I have to admit I always sucked at math, but at least in primary school i had excilent rang in geometry. Given diagonal you can calculate surface area using pythagorean theorem.

[signals]

How is that? It has been a long time since I've done math and geometry, but it is the d=13inch, diagonal, if diagonal is X surface area is always the same irrelevant of angle? I have to admit I always sucked at math, but at least in primary school i had excilent rang in geometry. Given diagonal you can calculate surface area using pythagorean theorem.

No, it definitely depends on the aspect ratio. #SOHCAHTOA We can easily solve this with trigonometry, but I learned a long time ago not to do math on the Internet since everyone is better at it than me, and they're quick to point it out. So let's try this:

What's the diagonal measurement of a yardstick? About 36", right? Does it have as much area as a 36" 16:9 TV? (Feel free to use a meterstick if you live in any other country than I do.)

[AndyChow]

I like google's chromebook pixel 2 3:2 ratio. If we were rational humans, we would probably use a sqrt(2):1 ratio. My biggest problem with 16:9 is that it's too wide to focus on (which is great for movies, because you focus on the center and your not-so-good eye-rods still see motion on the sides, so you feel immersed, but distracts when you are working), and is ridiculously thin when set vertically.

sqrt(2):1 ratio is very convenient, both horizontally and vertically. If you believe in empirical, the US letter standard is probably the most human UX efficient standard. And it's even more square, at 22:17. In fact, that's even more square than a 4:3 screen. If you thought that a US piece of paper was more rectangular than a 4:3 screen, that's probably because we are better at seeing motion horizontally than vertically. As in scanning a plain for danger. Either that, or my math is all wrong.

[leipero]

signals
Man, I admit I do suck at math, but to be honest, hugo8621 confused me for real. It just doesn't seem right to me, and you can't use yardstick example, and reasons are because we are talking about 90 degrees "right triangles" (two of them), where you have hypotenuse that represents diagonal of the whole screen. If hypotenuse is 13inch (or cm it doesn't matter) than imaginary quadrant surface is 169, and from that you can always get surface area of sides and sides lenght themselves, because one angle is always 90 degrees, to get precise lengts for sides we need another angle, but because we have aspect ratio 16:9 (or any other) that have always the same angles we can easily (I can't without calculator lol) calculate the lenghts of the sides.

The point here is that aspect ratio changes only those angles and sides lenghts change proportionally, so I'm genuinely confused how the surface area of the triangle is changed if hypotenuse is the same?

[signals]

signals
The point here is that aspect ratio changes only those angles and sides lenghts change proportionally, so I'm genuinely confused how the surface area of the triangle is changed if hypotenuse is the same?

There are LOTS of right triangles that have the same hypotenuse. The aspect ratio changes the angle. A 1:1 ratio (square) screen has a 45 degree angle for the hypotenuse. A 1000:1 ratio display has closer to a 0 degree angle for the hypotenuse. This changes the area of the triangle, even though the hypotenuse length is the same.

The reason I used the yardstick is that it's on the far end of the spectrum and you can eyeball its area in relation to a monitor. It's still a rectangle, and it still has (pretty close to) a 36" hypotenuse, it's just a 36:1 aspect ratio vs the monitor's 16:9.

[leipero]

signals Yeah, I know that, 1:1 aspect ratio have always 90 degree angle and for triangle half of that, 1000:1 while closer to 0 is not equal to 0, and that would make one side of the triangle very small, and another one huge. But that doesn't answer the question how 16:10 screen with diagonal of 13inch have larger surface area than 16:9 screen with the same diagonal. Unless you have been completely sarcastic when saying that everyone on the internet is better than you at math, let's wait for someone to give us actual formula and what is really the case, because I wasn't sarcastic at all.

PS: Forget it, you are right, we assume diagonal is the same (proving that I wasn't sarcastic at all).

[signals]

signalsUnless you have been completely sarcastic when saying that everyone on the internet is better than you at math, let's wait for someone to give us actual formula and what is really the case, because I wasn't sarcastic at all.

No, I just tend to make lots of mistakes when doing math, especially arithmetic. I'm sure someone will point them out. (Please do.)

Let's work the angles first:

16:9 - Tan θ = Opposite/Adjacent | tan(θ) = 9/16 | θ = atan(9/16) = 29.36 degrees
16:10 - Tan θ = Opposite/Adjacent | tan(θ) = 10/16 | θ = atan(10/16) = 32.00 degrees

So, the right triangle forming half of a 16:9 display has a θ of 29.36 degrees and a 16:10 is 32 degrees. Now, let's work the area for a diagonal of 100:

16:9:
Hyp=100, θ=29.36
Sin θ = Opposite/Hypotenuse | sin(29.36) = O / 100 | sin(29.36) = 0.4903 | O = 49.03
Cos θ = Adjacent/Hypotenuse | cos(29.36) = A / 100 | cos(29.36) = 0.8716 | A = 87.16
Total screen area: 49.02 * 87.16 = 4273.45

16:10
Hyp=100, θ=32.00
Sin θ = Opposite/Hypotenuse | sin(32) = O / 100 | sin(32) = 0.5299 | O = 52.99
Cos θ = Adjacent/Hypotenuse | cos(32) = A / 100 | cos(32) = 0.8480 | A = 84.80
Total screen area: 52.99 * 84.80 = 4493.55

So, with a diagonal of 100 units, a 16:9 screen has 4273 square units of area, but a 16:10 screen has 4494. The 16:10 screen has more area than the 16:9 display even with the same 100 unit diagonal.