Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Sun, 21 Mar 2004, James Miller wrote:

> On Sat, 20 Mar 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:
> 
> > Many thanks to the people who explained how to use vga=ask, which was a
> > necessary step in this process.
> >
> > Resizecons resizes all the consoles, including ones you have not used yet.
> > I have not tried this on a setup with two monitors.  I hope it does not
> > damage my TTL monitor trying to resize both monitors.   I am sure I could
> > never remember to unplug it first (even if I could reach the plug).


It does not matter what mode you boot in, AFTER you have set this all up.  
Since each video card has different available text modes (which even if
they look the same might be using different video modes) you need to
inform the computer of the hardware settings that are used in each mode by
booting into that mode and writing the settings to a file whose name
indicates ROWSxCOLUMNS.  To do this, boot with vga=ask in the mode you
might want to use later and write to a file with restoretextmode -w 132x25
(for 132x25 - maybe you can name the file 'narrow' or something else 
instead of 132x25, and if you get tired of typing this out you could also 
try making an alias in .profile such as alias narrow='resizecons 132x25').

Do this for each mode you want to use, rebooting each time (unless you can
somehow figure out what restoretextmodes does and do it without
rebooting).  You will then have a collection of files for each video mode
you selected and 'wrote' in the directory videomodes (which directory you
also had to make).  To choose one of these modes

resizecons 132x25 

- this gives you 132x25, with smaller text of the same 
shape (pixels closer together as in 1024 graphical mode).  

All but my cirrus cards have this mode and the other cards also have 
132x43 (or 132x44).  All the cards have 6 choices of number of lines in 80 
columns, and also 40x25 (CGA).  Some have 100 column modes, and/or more 
132 column modes.

I predict that if I use setfont to load another font (such as a Cyrillic 
one) before using resizecons to change the screen size, I will get 
Cyrillic in more columns and/or lines.  (This works in DOS with loadfont 
followed by vmode).  
 
I have only changed video modes as root but I don't think that is 
required.  I can check if anyone wants.


> This sounds potentially interesting, if a bit confusing.  I don't really
> understand the role of vga=ask, though, since it seems like
> restoretextmode and resizecons are what are actually changing the console
> geometry.  If you're just going to change to 132x25 later, why should it
> matter which vga mode you boot the computer with?  Anyway, this sounds the
> like the solution to Day's longstanding gripe against Linux for not being
> able to dynamically change the console geometry ("without being daggone
> root!", as I recall).  Are you listening/reading, Day?  Is this the sort
> of thing you were after, or not?
> 
> James
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