[gentoo-amd64] Re: Radeon driver update

[Duncan]

"Mark Haney" <mhaney@××××××××××××.org> posted
495B5F9B.2000902@××××××××××××.org, excerpted below, on  Wed, 31 Dec 2008
07:03:39 -0500:

> I updated the xf86-ati-driver package late yesterday and now my fonts
> are all screwed up.  My text is really big compared to what it was
> before.  I thought maybe xorg.conf was re-written but it looks fine to
> me.  As it is, my system is usable but not comfortably so.  So what the
> devil have I done to it?

Knowing the version now... and in cases like this, the version before... 
often helps...

FWIW, xf86-video-ati-6.9.0 here, on ~amd64, tho I've not updated in a few 
days so it's possible there's an update I've not seen yet if you're 
running ~amd64.  Of course, if you're running the xorg overlay, who 
knows, tho Beso mentioned running it at one point if I'm not mistaken.

As to the problem, what sort of monitor(s) are you running and do you 
have its dimensions set?  In xorg log (Xorg.0.log), does the monitor 
detection list the dimensions and are they accurate?

The reason I ask is that over the years, I've discovered that various X 
component updates (I never pinned down which ones) can have radically 
different ways of calculating the defaults, and that the only way to 
reliably keep it the same was to put the screen measurements in 
xorg.conf.  Since then, the drivers have supposedly gotten better at 
detecting it correctly from ddc, but at least with dual monitors and the 
video-ati driver mentioned above, xorg can still get it wrong (and does 
here, trying to apply the dimensions from just one to the combination of 
both, so the size is wildly distorted in one direction).

One of the problems recently seems to be the RandR support, which is 
supposed to be better at "Plug-n-pray" live detection and adjustment, but 
which at least with the video-ati radeon driver on reasonably stable 
multi-monitor desktop system configs is still lacking features and 
version to version stability compared to the previous merged-framebuffer 
solution.

So anyway, if you've not configured, either thru your desktop environment 
or xorg.conf, a standard dpi or display size (in mm not pixels), do so.  
It should go a long way to ending font size changes based on changeable 
xorg defaults.  If your display config is static enough to configure it 
in xorg, the setting to configure is DisplaySize, in the Monitor section 
in newer RandR style configs (they put it there so you could specify them 
per monitor, since monitors are supposed to be plug-n-pray with RandR, 
now), I forgot where in old configs, but see the xorg.conf manpage.  Or 
in KDE 3.5.10, you can set DPI in the main font config dialog.  YMMV in 
other KDE versions or other DEs.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman