[Novalug] display resolution and dimensions

Gary Knott garyknott@gmail.com
Tue Jan 21 13:43:26 EST 2014


 It used to be that there was no way to know the
actual screen dimensions or supported
resolutions (pixels per inch) for crt displays.
(I recall something about  knowing the resolution in terms
of horizontal and vertical "sweep frequency"
from a manual, and of course, the "frame buffer" size was
the final truth, and I can't remember how that was
established.)

[Indeed the early PCs had different vertical and horzontal
pixels per inch so it was a real mess to code for.]

These days, we don't code to drive the display
directly - we use either X-windows calls, or
Windows "API" functions.   But we still need
to know the dimensions and resolution!

Now, I believe the cpu can ask the monitor what
it's "native resolution" is, and maybe also its
physical dimensions.   (1) is that true?
and (2) can someone point to the documentation
about how to do it  (probably in machine code.)

I would also be interested in how to ask the
OS  (both Linux and Windows) for these
parameters, but I need to be sure they
aren't lying to me  - Windows has a function
to get the resolution,  but it used to be
essentially "an assumption".

Thanks , garyknott@gmail.com
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