"fake" a higher resoution?

Langford

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 5, 2006
Messages
1,339
I have a Toshiba Satellite R10 tablet PC, and It's been happily running Ubuntu for several versions. :) My only real complaint is that the screen resolution cannot exceed 1024x786. It is the bare minimum resolution I could possible be content with on an Ubuntu system. The main app I like to use is Inkscape, but they have in the last year implemented an update that makes it about one or two toolbar height too tall for my display. The result is that many of the controls fall off of the bottom of the screen. There are solutions for Inkscape specifically, but it doesn't change the overall desire for more space for everything else. :( What I really need is more physical space, one notch up would be enough for bliss, like 1152x864 or 1280x960.

It's basically a laptop, so I'm pretty sure that a hardware upgrade is not an option. The actual physical resolution of of the screen is 1024x786, but I am wondering if there is a way I can "fake" a higher resolution. Panning is not an acceptable solution, because I hate using a system like that. This isn't something where theme changes, DPI settings, or font size alterations will help, I just want a little more actual space. It has an Intel video chipset, with good speed and driver support, so I am willing to consider a compiz solution if it comes to that. I really wish there was a way to get the video card to just resize a bit, like it would if I were at a resolution lower than the physical resolution. I don't mind if it's not as clear to look at, I'd be willing to at least look at it to see if I could stand it.

If anyone has a solution, I would really be grateful.
 
I'm up to the point where I entered in:
Code:
xrandr --newmode "1152x864@60" 83.54 1152 1184 1496 1528 864 881 890 908
So now xrandr -q gives me:
Code:
Screen 0: minimum 640 x 480, current 1024 x 768, maximum 1024 x 768
default connected 1024x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right) 0mm x 0mm
   1024x768       60.0* 
   800x600        60.0  
   640x480        60.0  
  1152x864@60 (0x89)   83.5MHz
        h: width  1152 start 1184 end 1496 total 1528 skew    0 clock   54.7KHz
        v: height  864 start  881 end  890 total  908           clock   60.2Hz
Then I used:
Code:
xrandr --addmode default "1152x864@60"
Then I used:
Code:
xrandr -s "1152x864@60"
but it gave me:
Code:
Failed to change the screen configuration!
*Sigh* :(
 
A quick googling shows the display can only do up to 1024x768. If the display cannot do 1152x864, then there's no way to make it actually do 1152x864. What exactly do you mean by trying to "fake" a higher resolution?
 
Like I already said before, I already know the physical dimensions are 1024x768. I want to fit more on the screen than the physical size. The display can stretch to fill the screen on resolutions lower than the physical dimensions, so there should be no real reason it can't do the same for resolutions higher than the physical dimension. If the video card can't or is unwilling to do this internally, than I'm willing to look at software solutions. I don't mind if it's a bit less sharp, I know the drawbacks of image resizes.
 
OK, I see what you mean now. I've never tried it myself, but I would bet that you're a missing switch on xrandr from getting it to work. A quick googling found the eeePC guys have a hack using VNC, but I didn't find exactly how they're doing it.
 
I've read about the VNC thing, but it seems like it wouldn't work out too well for me. They are pretty much setting up a panning desktop, then "calling" themselves, then resizing thier viewing window so that it doesn't reach further than the panned area. It's sounds a bit clunky to me, and also like it would cause problems for my pen interface.
 
Thats exactly what I was thinking, which is why I stopped looking into the idea.

I think I may have come across what you need. It's the "Virtual" parameter in xorg.conf. For example:

Code:
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device     "Videocard0"
Monitor    "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth     16
SubSection "Display"
Viewport   0 0
Virtual   1600 1200
Depth     16
Modes    "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection
 
If I recall, "virtual" is used to get a panning desktop, it won't scale to my LCD screen. I've enabled panning before, and other than panning being kinda unpleasant, my pen no longer functions correctly. My pen in that mode treats the screen as if it were at the full resolution I wanted, while the display pans around under it at the native resolution, so they no longer sync up. On the bright side, it tells me that my tablet can read higher resolutions, even though I haven't convinced the LCD under it to match.
 
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