cygwinX xwin resolution

[Eliot Moss]

On 7/22/2016 12:23 AM, Dr. Rob Higgins wrote:
> I cannot find, after two days, any documentation on how and where to specify resolution parameters.
> I must be barking up the wrong trees.
>
> My laptop under Windows has recommended resolution set at 3200 x 1800
>
> CygwinX X Windows are much to small, and barely readable.
>
> Can anyone just tell me where to look, or what to specify?

As I recall, X does not have a strong notion of "resolution".
It does know the dimensions of the *screen* measured in pixels.  One
specifies window sizes also in pixels.

I noticed similar effects when I moved to a Microsoft Surface Book,
which has 3000 x 2000 pixels on the screen.

Perhaps the most relevant file is your .Xdefaults.  For character-
oriented applications such as xterm and emacs, windows sizes are
generally expressed in terms of lines and columns.  I found I needed
to specify larger *fonts*, e.g.:

XTerm*font:                     -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal-*-34-240-*-*-*-*-*-*
XTerm*bodyFont:			-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal-*-34-240-*-*-*-*-*-*

Emacs.default.attributeFont:	-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal-*-34-240-*-*-*-*-*-*

Xpdf*fontList:	-*-helvetica-medium-r-*--*-240-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

(The last one took some finding!)

For applications that measure in terms of pixels, I needed to specify larger
values, e.g.:

Xpdf*geometry:	3000x1875+0+0

(In this last one, 1875 leaves room for the icons in the bar at the bottom
under Windows 10.)

The xrdb program can be helpful around all this.  In particular,
xrdb -symbols will output symbol definitions that you can feed into
the C preprocessor (cpp) to process a file with symbolic names such
as WIDTH and HEIGHT.  You can also undoubtedly capture and process
these with a bash script, or a script in a variety of scripting
languages, to help set up the values you want when creating windows.

Now, backing off a little from my more absolute statement at the
beginning, xrdb -symbols *does* print out X_RESOLUTION and
Y_RESOLUTION.  These give the number of pixels per meter on the
screen.  For my Surface Book their value is 7576.  Presumably you
could capture that and figure something out.  And presumably
applications could as well, but I am not aware of applications
that auto-adjust according to the screen resolution.  The main
ones I use do not seem to take it into account.

(And many Windows apps do not seem to either.  I get tiny icons
sometimes (Eclipse) or cut Windows areas (CrashPlan), etc.)

Hope this help!    Eliot Moss

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