[Xquartz-dev] Screen dimensions

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

+ Jeremy Huddleston <jeremyhu at apple.com>:

> What version are you running?  Leopard versions of X11 should 
> report a hard-coded value of 75dpi, and starting with 2.3.2_beta??, 
> it reports 96dpi:

Hmm. Don't modern displays actually communicate both physical 
dimensions and the number of pixels to the host computer over the DVI 
interface (or VGA even)? Why is there a need to hard code screen 
resolutions?

Right now I am looking at a ruler on my screen that is put there by 
Art Director's Toolkit. It is nicely graduated in millimeters, and 
... uh-oh ... forget that, the graduation is totally wrong on my 
laptop screen ... 100 mm as measured by a physical ruler is 148 mm by 
the toolkit's ruler. So I guess this problem, which one might naïvely 
think is easy (Apple is after all controlling the hardware), is still 
unsolved. I find that puzzling, and just a little unsettling. Or do 
you believe in a different millimeter on your side of the pond?

- Harald