On 19 Dec 2001, Chris Tooley wrote:
> I realize that there may be a really good reason for this and so I am
> not asking this synical, but rather to simply get an answer.
>
> Why is it that it is impossible for X to change resolutions and/or color
> depths on the fly? I would think that most end user's would feel that
The X11 specification doesn't allow it, and it would break most apps.
Clients expect a single color depth and they render all their images,
etc... assuming that. There's no abstraction layer to deal with this
like there is in OpenGL. X clients draw with pixel data, not colors.
Resolution is an easier problem to solve because generally all you
break is the window manager (which doesn't know anything about the size
change).
> this is a very nice thing to be able to do. I wish I could switch
> resolutions without having to restart X to do it and panning to a
> smaller virtual desktop size isn't what I mean. Maybe I've just missed
> something in the setup?
There is an extension in the works to allow resizes. Don't
hold your breath though.
So basically, the answer is core X11 doesn't support this and
never did. Alot of applications assume these rules won't change.
There is an extension in the works to allow resizes, but that's
most likely an XFree86 5.x feature because it will likely require
changes to the driver architecture.
Mark.
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